Runaways : Dead End Kids

RUNAWAY BOY

With his last issue of Runaways about to hit stands, Brian K. Vaughan looks back at the creation of his new Marvel icons

After four years, one relaunch and legions of fans devouring each new issue, Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona are ready to run from their critical and cult hit Runaways. Launched in 2003 as part of Marvel’s Tsunami imprint, the story of a ragtag team of teenagers on the run from their supervillain parents was the only series to survive the initiative to bring younger readers into the superhero fold and is arguably the most successful original Marvel comic in over a decade.

However, all good things must come to an end, and with Feb. 28’s Runaways #24, the series’ creators will exit stage left to be replaced by superstar writer Joss Whedon (Astonishing X-Men) and artist Michael Ryan (New Excalibur). Wizard Universe caught up with Vaughan on a lunch break from his most recent gig as a writer for ABC’s “Lost” for his feelings on why he ended his run now, what Runaways means for his career and why he thinks Whedon will save the series.

WIZARD: So Brian, this is the end of the road for you and Runaways. Last time I talked to you the question arose about wrapping up some longer series like Y and wrapping up Ex Machina eventually. You said that you hadn’t even gotten into that headspace yet because there was so much work left to do. Now that you have taken a series that you started from the ground up and wrapped it up, what’s it like to be done and handing it off?

VAUAGHAN: Well, it’s different than Y or Ex Machina. I think with Y, that’s going to have a real sense of finality to it because that’s the end of those characters forever. This for me is less traumatic, especially because I know I’m handing it over to not just another writer, but my favorite writer. So it’s less that my children are dying and more that I’m putting them up for adoption, and they just hit the lottery in terms of who is going to adopt them. It was still tough and it hasn’t really sunk in yet just because I haven’t seen the last of Adrian’s pages for our final issue, but it was definitely hard. It was hard to reach the end of it.

I know that originally you said they’d pry this away from your cold dead hands. So what was the point for you where you knew your time with the characters was going to be over?

VAUGHAN: I think it’s as we started this final arc. I sort of plotted it out, and when I got to the end of it I had a conversation with Adrian and said, “I think that this is as good a story as we’ve done, and I have ideas for more stories after this, but they’re not as good as this one.” Runaways, even though it’s always been a critical hit and it’s done well in trades and stuff, it’s always been sort of on the bubble in terms of monthly sales. I just felt like if he and I kept going and if our stories were ever anything slightly less than the very best that we had to offer, it’d be the death of the book. So we started thinking if there was anyone out there who would just come in with new energy and who would sort of breathe new life into the book.

In some ways I didn’t want to leave the book, but I think that it was just beyond my wildest dreams when Joss presented himself. I never even thought that was a remote possibility, but as soon as I knew it was, I just think that Joss writing the book is the difference between cancellation and Runaways really becoming a permanent part of the Marvel Universe forever. I just knew that I didn’t want to write the last Runaways story. So turning it over to someone was sort of our bid at immortality. In a way, I know that it’s selling out, and I promised everyone that I would stay on for a hundred more issues...and part of me wants to. But I don’t think that there would’ve been a hundred more issues if I had stayed on. It’s going to take someone like Joss, I think, to really bring the kids the new audience.

Have you read any of his scripts yet for the book, for his first issue, or are you waiting?

VAUGHAN: I’ve read the first two, and they are annoyingly spectacular. I sort of wanted them to be good so that I wouldn’t bring shame to these characters, but I didn’t want them to be good because I wanted people to sort of be like, “Well, it’s all right, but it’s no Vaughan. He owned this book.” No. They’re outrageously good. I think it’s one of the best things he’s ever written, and I’m a big Whedon geek. It’s really great, and just great in unexpected ways. Totally, it’s something that I would’ve never imagined for the characters, but it’s absolutely appropriate.

When you launched Runaways it was part of the sort of failed Tsunami initiative, and you had two books in that launch initially. Since you started out back when they were looking for younger readership, have you guys since thought of this book as your contribution to the Marvel Universe, your way of giving back to all the stories and all the characters you’ve read before?

VAUGHAN: Yeah, definitely. I mean, that Tsunami...that’s something where I never even heard that word until after the first issue had come out. I know that Mystique was probably lumped in with the other children’s books even though it was about an amoral assassin. So I never really understood Tsunami. But definitely when it comes to Runaways, I know that I sort of made my bones writing other people’s characters, and especially in the Marvel Universe, that’s how I broke into comics. I did want to contribute something that was 100 percent new but that felt like it belonged in the Marvel Universe. It wasn’t just a DC idea shoehorned into Marvel. Adrian and I did try to think of what sort of classic Stan Lee high concept we could do that resonates with the real world. I don’t think that we hit on anything of the heights that Stan Lee would’ve come up with were he in his prime working today, but I do think that it feels that it fits maybe more than some of the other new creations, not that there have been many at Marvel over the last couple of decades.

You hate to pick favorites amongst your children, but looking back on all the stories you did with the kids, were there any standout moments where you hope people look back and think “That’s what Runaways is all about”?

VAUGHAN: I guess that it’s probably both of the issue #18s. I’d say #18 in the first run was something that-I always hate when writers would describe a story like, “Oh, this one just wrote itself.” Nothing ever writes itself for me. It’s always a real torturous process for me of banging my head into the wall until something comes out, but #18 really wrote itself, and I particularly liked the last page of that, sort of the end of our first season as it turned out to be. Then our next issue #18 was the death of Gert, and for me, it was heartbreaking. It was my favorite character, but I do think that it made the book better. I hope it did. I just think also in terms of Adrian, I don’t think that he’s ever been better than he was in that issue. Just really watching him grow and change as an artist over a couple of years was really thrilling for me.

His most recent issues have been amazing.

VAUGHAN: I mean, he’s insane just in that he gets better. You can always tell guys sort of start off in the business trying to look like one artist and then change to look like someone else until they find their own voice, but Adrian has never looked like anyone but Adrian. He just keeps getting more and more unique. He’s the best.

Now you have the added career wrinkle of being a full-time TV writer. Thinking about the future as far as launching new comic books, is your plan right now to continue what books you have and then maybe on the season hiatus think about doing new books?

VAUGHAN: I think that I’ve already started to think about it, and that’s just the way that my mind works. I think that even when I wasn’t full time on “Lost” I was writing the screenplay for Y or starting the screenplay for Ex Machina. I’ve always had a lot of different irons in the fire. So when I’m here and I’m not on my lunch break talking to Wizard, [comics] do get 100 percent of my brain. But then I go home at night, and I think about something else, and I’ve got the weekends. So, no, I’m not even taking a break from thinking of new concepts. I think that it’ll probably be not until after Y ends that anything would start coming out, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not thinking about new stuff at this stage.

So then as far as watching Runaways grow in Joss’ hands and then beyond into the rest of the Marvel Universe, is that something that you’re excited about? Do you feel like you’ll get to meet them again years later as other people pick them up?

VAUGHAN: You mean would I ever write the characters again or read the books?

Either/or. I was thinking reading the characters. I had assumed that there wouldn’t be a circumstance where you wouldn’t come back and write them again.

VAUGHAN: Never say never, but I did sort of leave saying everything I felt I had to say right now. That doesn’t mean that it couldn’t happen. But no plans right now, and as for reading them, yeah. That was definitely another part of easing the transition. Zeb Wells, who’s one of my favorite young writers-seeing him handle the characters so well in the Young Avengers/Runaways crossover really led me to believe that I can turn these kids over to someone else. It’s not that they captured my voice, which I think would be really boring, or that they do what I want them to do with the characters, but just that they take them to unexpected places. That’s what I want. I never want someone to try and take my style or my voice. I always liked how gracious Stan Lee was with other writers who would take over his characters. He was never overly protective of them. He never said, “Oh, you’re sh---ing on my legacy. This isn’t how they’re meant to be written.” But Stan was always happiest when, I think, other creators would try and make his characters their own. I’m not as magnanimous as Stan, but I do feel the same way, I think.