The incomparable podcast, number 54, August 2011.

So we're back on The Incomparable. I'm Jason Snell. It is the comic book club. I convene this meeting of the comic book club joining me today in the studio to talk about comic related issues.

Are Jason Brightman? Hi, Jason.

Hey, everyone.

The price of comics is very high. That's not what I mean by issues. Or comic issues, individual issues of comics.

What are individual issues of comics?

Yes, exactly. And Lisa Schmeiser is also here. Hi, Lisa. I'm unloading all of my individual issues of comics. If anybody wants them. Well, everybody needs to get rid of their issues and move on with their lives eventually. That's just how it is. Anyway, our topic today is Brian Cave On, the writer of many different comics in very many different

places. He's also written some TV. I think he wrote, I think I counted it's like five episodes

of Lost. He's written some screenplays. He's done all sorts of other things, but I think we're

going to focus on three of his comics in particular runaways, which he did for Marvel, which is in many ways the last creator kind of creator created not for a corporate entity comic at Marvel, or at least the only one I can think of in a long time where a really strong piece of intellectual property was actually created out of nothing by a writer, which is interesting because usually they just take

it and build their own series around it. They own all the characters, but he created that for Marvel,

and then Josh Whedon picked it up later and did a series of that. The two creator-owned

Brian K. Vaughn series that we're going to talk about are Y, The Last Man, and X Machina.

So we've got three Brian KVan topics to go on today.

And I just, I was cramming this week.

I read the rest of XMachina, which I hadn't finished, and I went back and I reread Y the last man. So I'm ready. Nice.

Whose idea was it to do this podcast, by the way? Lises. I believe it was mine. All right, Lisa, maybe you can get us started then. What would you like to tackle first?

That's a good question. I was going to ask what everyone thinks of the runaways, because in many ways, I feel like it's his tightest, cleanest work. And I would love to hear opinions on whether, and I find that interesting because it's a piece of work for Marvel, which doesn't have a vested interest in making sure that comic books are tight and clean,

but rather has a vested interest in making sure they've got a narrative that can flog for years and years and years and years at a time.

And yet if you read the first installment of Runaways that he wrote, it's an excellent standalone series.

You could walk away from it when it was done and never have to pick it up again and you'd have a very satisfying book.

I mean, the beauty of creating new characters is you can start clean and tell a relatively clean story in a way you can't if you have to go back over.

...