OK, it’s official, I would go gay for Brian K. Vaughan. Y: The Last Man, Runaways, an arc on Buffy Season 8, Pride of Baghdad, it’s all brilliant. In all of his stories, he has proven himself a master of working with established characters as well as creating possibly the most original and exciting new list of series since Stan Lee and Jack Kirby hit the scene in the 60s. He manages to deal with a myriad of social issues while deftly sidestepping didacticism and preaching. Bearing that in mind, I was a little cautious when I picked up Ex Machina. After all, its concept, though brilliant and original (clichéd praise when it comes to Vaughan), dealt intricately with the political world. Ergo, many of the issues Vaughan could talk about subtly might be shoved to the front. Happily, BKV delivers yet again and yet another one of his creations has become one of my favorite series.

Ex Machina centers around Mitchell Hundred, a civil engineer who is left with the ability to communicate with machinery with moving parts (from guns to radios to handcuffs) after touching a mysterious glowing object floating under the Brooklyn Bridge. With the help of his two friends Rick Bradbury and Kremlin, Mitchell begins a short-lived career as the superhero The Great Machine (named for Thomas Jefferson’s term for American society).

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After the success of Buffy Season Eight, Joss decided to revisit the other show in the Buffyverse, Angel. Whereas Buffy ended because some of the actors wanted to move on and the show was allowed to reach a good conclusion, Angel was canceled in its best season (and what stands as my single favorite season of television). The finale must have pissed off a good 2/3 of the fans, with another character’s death and a seemingly anticlimactic ending that showed our heroes on the verge of an epic battle. While I personally thought the ending fit perfectly with the show’s theme of gradual redemption and a daily grind against evil instead of one big showdown, I still think it would have worked better as a season finale instead of a series closer.

Enter Angel: After the Fall. Starting a few months after the end of the show, it opens in a Los Angeles that has been sent to hell as retribution for Angel and co.’s actions. The Angel Investigations team is scattered all over the place: Angel is still at Wolfram & Hart with a ghostly Wesley. Connor has shacked up with Gwen and Nina (he always did like older women, though I don’t get why they put up with his whiny shit) and is helping save humans from the new demon overlords. Illyria has become a lord and her “pet” Spike is also helping humans. And a special friend is the lord of Silverlake.

**minor spoilers and more after the jump**

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Writer- Joss Whedon
Artists- Karl Moline, Andy Owens (i), Michelle Madsen (colors), Jo Chen (covers)
Publisher- Dark Horse Comics

I’ve made no bones about my love for Buffy Season Eight, but it is genuinely one of my favorite series. A somewhat rocky start has given way to a masterful continuation of one of the best TV shows of the last 25 years, if not in the entire history of the medium. After finishing up the stellar “Wolves at the Gate” arc, Joss decided to spice things up a bit and plan a crossover with his first and, to me, still best major comics gig, Fray. So let’s get ourselves caught up with the last three issues, shall we?

**issue #16 spoilers and more after the break**

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The start of my journey into comic collections can probably be traced back to two people: Alan Moore and Joss Whedon. Alan Moore’s novels V For Vendetta and Watchmen were two of the three comics I started with (the third being The Dark Knight Returns), but it was Whedon who sustained my interest. In the few months since I renewed my comic book readings, a large portion of the stuff I’ve read has been Whedon-penned titles; Astonishing X-Men, Buffy Season 8, and Angel: After the Fall (which, granted isn’t written by Whedon, but it’s his property and he has final say) have been consistently witty, action-packed, and all-out entertaining even in their weakest moments. Now, since the current Buffy arc has a crossover, I cracked open Joss’ first major foray into comics, Fray.

Set 200 years into the future, Fray takes Joss’ own slayer mythos and turns it on its head. In this future, magic has somehow been erased from the Earth, but vampires and other beasties still remain. Greatly reduced in number, vampires- called “lurks” in this futuristic mega-city- have largely been relegated back into children’s stories, though they are slowly gaining in numbers. Stranger still, a Slayer hasn’t been seen in over a century.

**more after the jump**

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As someone fairly new to comics, I’ve been mainly sticking to picking up the classics first and only venturing into modern fare to read Buffy Season 8 and Angel: After the Fall, but that is of course out of fanboy love for Joss Whedon’s seminal TV shows. But one comic is being routinely mentioned in the same breath as established classics, appearing on lists alongside Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns as a must have. Well, I’m 5 trades in, and I gotta say, people are right about Y: The Last Man.

Y: The Last Man reads like a film, and it’s the best and most thoughtful piece of science fiction since perhaps Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Brian K. Vaughan wastes no time crafting a surprisingly personal science fiction story seemingly effortlessly: he uses the plague to highlight the jarring gender gap in major positions (spouting out figures like 95% of all American plots were male, almost all local and federal government officials, etc.) but also has a lot of humor strewn about (converting the a phallic monument into a memorial for the men lost made me laugh for minutes on end).

**more after the jump**

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