Still, his heart remains in comics. “I think sometimes people are like, ‘Oh, are you just going to sell out, Vaughan? Are you just going to go to Hollywood full-time?’” he says. “But I’m only able to do work in Hollywood because I have comics.”
Here, he speaks about Roam, his worries about AI, and maybe a little bit about Dune: Part Three as well.
On Roam, his forthcoming comic with Cliff Chiang:
It’s completely unlike Paper Girls, completely unlike anything I’ve ever done. It’s set in the distant, distant future. The logline, as it were, is that in the future, everyone will get to be a superhero, but only while they’re young. We’re trying not to reveal too much more than that.
I remember seeing The Matrix, and having no idea what the fuck it was gonna be about. That was such a delight. So we’re trying to do that here. I’ve been doing this for 31 years. I started when I was a teenager. I have a Spider-Man story here and there. I did a little Batman, and Ex Machina was my sci-fi political comic that sort of deconstructed the superhero. But this is certainly my first true superhero book.
On his fears about AI impacting comics, film, and TV:
It’s terrifying. My friends who work in previsualization and as storyboard artists, these jobs are going away. I’ve heard about editors going away as well. Show business is a business, first and foremost. I’m lucky to sort of have been grandfathered in. I think there will always be people who are interested in bespoke human-made stories. But the future is terrifying and unknowable, and coming at us very, very quickly.
I’m heartened by the fact I’ve got two teenagers who are so disgusted by AI and grossed out if they ever hear I used it—and I’ve certainly never used it for anything creative. But I do think we’re getting pretty close to the day that someone could be like, “I’m tired of waiting for the next issue. Give me the next issue of Saga.” That’s when you get to the point of, do you just want content, something that’s a distraction?