Brian K. Vaughan was born in Cleveland Ohio in 1976 and enjoyed comic books from a young age. He and his older brother were both fans of The Incredible Hulk. Vaughan decided to become a writer in his teens and enrolled at New York University Tisch School of the Arts, where he took film study. It was at NYU that Vaughan participated in the Stan-Hattan Project, a class for aspiring comic book writers. After his schooling, Vaughan would eventually go on to write for Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse comics. He contributed to works such as Spider-Man, Captain American, Batman, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer to name a few. Despite his success as a contributor, Vaughan came to favor creating his own characters and from 2002 to 2008, he wrote one of his most popular works Y: The Last Man, a post-apocalyptic series about the mysterious death of nearly every Y Chromosome on planet earth, aside from one man and his pet monkey.
Vaughan’s other popular works include Saga, The Pride of Baghdad, and Runaways. His unique and creative style has drawn comparisons with other iconic comic book/graphic novel writers such as Frank Miller and Steve Niles. In 2018, The Hollywood Reporter announced Vaughan had inked a 3-year deal with Legendary for his film and TV works. Not only have his contributions to the comic book world been immensely entertaining, but they have also been incredibly successful, with many of his works making the jump to the silver screen, with movie or television series adaptations. Up next, his award-winning comic book series Ex Machina will be adapted for the big screen in The Great Machine starring Oscar Isaac. Here are the best movies & TV series based on Brian K. Vaughan’s comics, ranked.
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4 The Great Machine
Legendary Pictures
Ex Machina is a comic series by Brian K. Vaughan and published through DC’s Wildstorm. The series follows protagonist Mitchell Hundred in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, who is elected Mayor of New York. Hundred is also the world’s sole superhero The Great Machine. The comic book intersperses present-day events with flashbacks of Mitchell’s past as The Great Machine. Vaughan, writer and creator, revealed in a 2016 interview with Vulture that “Ex Machina was about trying to make sense of the world after watching from the roof of my apartment in Brooklyn as these buildings fell and trying to make sense of politics and this concept of heroism and whether that’s a real thing or just something we impose on people. That was all born right out of that day.” In January 2020, it was announced that Ex Machina would be adapted for the big screen with the not-yet-released film The Great Machine starring Oscar Isaac.
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3 Paper Girls
Prime Video
2 Y: The Last Man
Future Investigations
Y: The Last Man is a post-apocalyptic science fiction comic book that chronicles a mysterious global androcide wherein every male chromosome (including those in-utero) die en masse, save for amateur escape artist Yorick Brown and his pet monkey Ampersand. Chaos ensues as society crumbles and the surviving women adjust to life without men and the sobering realization that, barring an act of god or radical scientific intervention, the human race will one day be extinct. The comic book series was met with widespread critical acclaim. In 2021, an adaptation of the same name premiered on FX on Hulu. The short-lived series starred Diane Lane, Ashley Romans, Ben Schnetzer, Olivia Thirlby, and Amber Tamblyn and was canceled after one season despite receiving generally favorable reviews from critics.
1 Marvel’s Runaways
Marvel Television & Fake Empire Productions
Runaways is a superhero comic series distributed by Marvel. It chronicles the lives of a group of teenagers who learn of their parent’s clandestine life of crime as members of an eclectic criminal organization known as “The Pride”. Once faced with the truth, the band of teenagers runs away and tries to right their parent’s wrongs by devoting their lives to heroism. Each adorned with their own superpowers from birth, the band of superheroes dubs themselves “The Prides Kids” and wage war against their supervillain parents. The series was canceled after just 3 seasons.
