Brian K. Vaughan Leaving Runaways, Moves to Baghdad

How ridiculous is it that every news site is running with “Brian K. Vaughan” headlines, when it’s the entire creative team leaving the book? I’d buck the trend, but I get limited space in that title bar. Sorry Adrian Alphona!

Yes, that’s right, Brian K. Vaughan AND artist Adrian Alphona are leaving the book with issue #24, leaving them with only 5 more issues to share with us. Read Vaughan’s own words HERE, from his site. To sum up, here’s a small excerpt:

“This was entirely my idea. While Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina have planned endings, I’ve always said that I hoped Runaways would last forever, long after I left the series. I never wanted Runaways to become a vanity book that was dependent on its original creators’ involvement; I wanted our kids to be able to eventually run away from us, and find new life apart from their ‘parents.’

“I can say with a great deal of confidence that these next five issues are the pinnacle of the series, and Adrian and I decided that the best thing for the Runaways would be to hand them off to new creators on this high note, rather than risk overstaying our welcome until we ran ourselves–and the book–into the ground.”

We won’t find out who the new team is until next week, but I don’t think anyone’s expecting to hear names that can outperform the series’ original creators.

Sadly, this comes not too long before Y: The Last Man will be ending (at issue 60, as he’d always intended). So what will Vaughan be doing with his free time?

Maybe more work on books like the new one he’s got coming out, called Pride of Baghdad. If you haven’t heard of it, you need to pay better attention. As the NY Times article/interview reiterates, the book will be arriving in stores on September 13th, and it provides the story of a group of lions that “escape a zoo in Iraq during an American bombing raid.” Sounds almost cute at first blush, but if you read the articles, it becomes clear that it’s nothing of the sort. I have no doubt it will be at least as deep, meaningful, and impacting as his previous work, if not moreso. More info available in his Newsarama interview.