BRIAN K. VAUGHAN

I'm totally open to it being a movie or a television series or whatever, but truthfully, if no one wants to do it right, I'm also happy for 'Ex Machina' to only ever exist as a comic book.

The biggest inspiration for everything I do is, of course, my wife, playwright Ruth McKee.

I was embarrassingly well-versed in Marvel lore, so it was pretty easy to slip into that world. But really, already, by the time I'd started writing superhero comics, my dream was really to be writing my own characters.

It's interesting - I think superheroes get much more unfair derision. There are so many good superhero books being done. Science fiction is almost more reputable, I guess, at least a step up from poor superheroes.

I don't think I have discipline when it comes to anything.

I like animal sidekicks. They seem to be a pretty cool trope of post-apocalyptic fiction - just because if you're going to have this lone protagonist, they're going to need someone to talk to. Dogs are overused, and cats are dumb. So that leaves monkeys.

Print and digital comics will always coexist.

There are probably writers who are much more visual than I am and some who are less. I like to think of myself as a happy medium.

My parents grew up during the space race, and I think they imagined the future would be us living on moon bases and everyone has rocket shoes.

Having children changes you forever, as a writer and as a human being. I hope it's for the better on both counts, but I guess we'll see.

I guess my journey with comics began with stuff like Spider-Man and Batman. I started off with mainstream superhero stuff, which I've never abandoned.

I wanted to write a story about a future where everyone has a secret identity, in part because the Internet no longer exists.

I grew up with a sister I was very close with and a mom who was a powerful influence on my life. I was always close with women.

I was only ever part of 'Lost' - a very small part of an extremely talented writers' room, where as a writer, it's sort of your job to sublimate your ego and work in the service of the show and the show's voice.

As much as I'm enjoying stuff out here in Hollywood, I will always think of myself as a comic-book writer who does film and television, not a film and TV writer who occasionally does comics.

That was the appealing thing about comics: There literally is no budget in comics. You're only limited by your imagination.

I think there is a possible future where maybe we do just take a hard turn away from the Internet and we do start valuing our privacy again.

By the time you have your protagonist attempting to assassinate the Pope, you've sort of signaled that everything is on the table.

In film, you have the luxury of accomplishing what you need in 24 frames every second. Comics, you only have five or six panels a page to do that.

I never like to talk about my own politics, but whether you're left, right or center, the 2008 race was definitely good drama.

I am a big theater fan. It's mostly just being pretentious, I think, and trying to look smart.

I never liked working on editorial-driven comics. I just didn't see what was the point. They don't pay well enough for me to write other people's ideas.

I start with something that makes me angry or confused, and then I write about it. It's a form of self-help.

After 9/11, I knew I wanted to write about power and identity and the way Americans on all sides of the political spectrum often mythologize our leaders, which are themes that the superhero genre has always handled really well.

Because it's in and about New York City, I knew 'Ex Machina' was going to have to continually mix the mundane and the fantastic.