Dune: Part Three writer Brian K. Vaughn has a new comic on the way

Brian K. Vaughan claims he's seen Dune: Part Three and it's "a pretty damn good movie."

"I'm sorry I'm shy," she says. "I hope one day I can say a lot more. It was really great. I can't believe it happened."

Van is in town for New York Comic Con, but not to talk about Dune. Apparently, he came to the convention to talk about Paper Girls, a comic he created with Cliff Chiang that will be turned into an Amazon Prime Video series in 2022. However, during the Paper Girls panel, the pair announced that they are working on a new comic called Roam, a superhero sci-fi series due out in February of next year.

Wan tells me that Rome was born out of a deep desire to work with Chiang again. They considered doing an eight-page short story or maybe a one-shot, but in the end they said, "Damn it, let's do an ongoing series."

One has professional writers they want to kill for. He began working in comics in the 1990s and has penned such favorites as Saga, Y: The Last Man, and Marvel's Runaways. (The latter two were made into TV series; the saga is a story people have wanted to see adapted for years.) He also served as a writer on Lost and produced the CBS adaptation of Stephen King's Under the Dome.

However, his heart remains in the comics. "I think sometimes people are like, 'Oh, are you just selling, Van?'" he says. Are you going to go to Hollywood full time?” “But I can only work in Hollywood because I'm a comic.”

Here, he talks about Roam, his concerns about artificial intelligence, and maybe a little about Dune: Part Three.

In Roam, his upcoming comic with Cliff Chiang:

It's completely unlike Paper Girls, completely unlike anything I've ever done. It takes place in the distant future. The bottom line is that in the future, everyone will become a superhero, but only when they're young. We try not to reveal more than that.

I remember seeing The Matrix, and I had no idea what it was going to be about. It was such a pleasure. So we try to do that here. I have been doing this for 31 years. I started when I was a teenager. I have a Spiderman story here and there. I did a little Batman and Ex Machina was my sci-fi political comic that sort of subverted the superhero. But this is definitely my first real superhero book.

On his fear of AI's impact on comics, movies and TV:

This is terrible. My friends who work in previews and as storyboard artists, those jobs are disappearing. I've also heard about editors leaving. Show business is first and foremost a business. I am lucky to have become a grandfather in a way. I think there will always be people who will be interested in custom stories made by humans. But the future is terrifying and unknown, and it is coming at us very, very quickly.

I'm happy with the fact that I have two teenagers who are very disgusted by AI and would freak out if they heard I used it - and I sure did. I never used it for anything creative. But I think we're getting closer to the day when someone can say, “I'm tired of waiting for the next issue. "Give me the next issue of Saga." That's when it comes down to do you just want content, something that's a distraction?

There is an element of this in Roam as well. Artificial intelligence is one of the components of the story. So this is something I guess I'll have to write about with the human flesh machine to process, but I'm thinking about it every day like you.

Well, a little about Dune: Part Three, which he's seen:

I can't say much other than it's a wonderful, crazy, ridiculous honor to be involved with, and my contribution is very small. Dennis's real author on this is Frank Herbert. The novel is a star. And obviously the best cast and crew ever assembled. It's a damn beautiful movie. It's my favorite of the three. That I can say with true humility. I can't say anything except that it is as wonderful as you can imagine.

I gave special thanks in the first movie. I was doing quite a bit of consulting. I was working at Legendary [the media company that owns the rights to Dune ] at the time, and they just invited me to see an early cut, which was just as awesome as the finished product. But honestly, I only talked to Dennis. There has never been a director as talented and kind and warm-hearted. I didn't expect to receive this call at first, but it was obviously one I couldn't refuse.

I should probably just be cautious at this point. The film does not need my promotion. I don't want to do anything that makes me seem more important in the process.

I am a small worker in the world of Hollywood. It's changing so fast that who knows what tomorrow, six months from now, will look like.

But then again, I have teenagers and I can see how happy they were with Backrooms, by Obsession. Gen X seems to have been force-fed a lot of my childhood stories we guessed, and they're clearly hungry for something new.

On why he doesn't write adaptations of his comics:

I've hit on it in the past. The novelist Richard Price, I once heard him say in response, "Why don't you adapt your stuff more?" Which is like adapting your work to being a dentist and creating a root canal. Just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should. Let another bastard handle it. I believe these were the words of Mr. Price.

Adapting to other people has been productive and exciting, and I love seeing others adapt to me, but I've also done a lot of work in the last decade where it feels like I'm either adapting or adapting. I think it was part of Roam's siren song. It is time to break new ground.

Dennis says that to adapt to something you love is to do violence to it. That's what I've always told people when I've adapted. It is more important than loyalty to be this good. He is a master of cinema, and cinema is rarely about people sitting in a room having a conversation. How do you translate this to cinema? This is an alchemy that I do not understand. He is just unique in it.

On Lost and why writing for commercial breaks was a challenge:

I love my drama Prestige without commercials, but working on Lost and having a cliffhanger five times per episode was kind of difficult. It was very challenging to have it when you were able to finish it. Can you write something where people are like, "Okay, I'm just going to wet my pants. I can't risk not coming back [before the vacation is over]."