ABSTRACT

This chapter develops a reading of Brian K. Vaughan's work as a critique of any ideology that justifies military might as a foreign relations tool. Beginning with Ex Machina's direct engagement with the effects of 9/11 on New York City and moving through the means by which Pride of Baghdad portrays an American military response to terrorist attacks, it ends by demonstrating how Vaughan's epic sci-fi series Saga condemns nations that engage in sustained military terror. By reading these works as a progression—from the local/municipal to the international and eventually to the interstellar—we can witness how Vaughan uses his work to transform a personal response to the events of 9/11 into a sustained engagement with international politics. The tension between Hundred's role as The Great Machine and mayor is the driving force behind Vaughan's exploration of heroism and also the means by which he uses his work to comment on what it means to live in post-9/11 NYC.