Lost in Cleveland?

This article is from cleveland.com showing off their Lost connection.

'Lost' writer Brian K. Vaughan is a Cleveland native

by Mark Dawidziak/Plain Dealer Television Critic

"Lost" has found the Cleveland connection. The vital creative link between the ABC drama's mystical South Pacific island and Northeast Ohio is Brian K. Vaughan.

The Cleveland native has just finished co-writing his third episode for the supernatural suspense show's fifth season, which begins at 9 p.m. Wednesday on WEWS Channel 5. The first of Vaughan's season-five episodes, "The Little Prince," is slated to air Wednesday, Feb. 4.

There's no easy route to that mysterious island at the heart of the series' many plot puzzles. All of the show's characters have intriguing back stories, and Vaughan is no exception.

A St. Ignatius High School graduate, class of '94, Vaughan headed for New York University to study film.

"It was a very unlikely journey to 'Lost,' even though I started out as a film school nerd, thinking I would one day be doing film and television," said Vaughan, who grew up in Rocky River and Westlake. "I did end up in television, but not before first going in a totally different direction."

The detour was comic books. While an undergraduate at NYU, Vaughan signed up for Marvel Comics' Stan-hattan Project. Named for Marvel master Stan Lee, it was a class for aspiring comic book writers.

Notching his first comic book credit in 1997, Vaughan soon became one of the busiest writers in the business. He wrote scripts for some of the highest-profile characters at Marvel (X-Men, Spider-Man, Captain America), DC (Batman, Green Lantern) and Dark Horse (Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

But Vaughan gained even greater satisfaction from the comic book series he created, including "Y: The Last Man" and "Ex Machina."

Damon Lindelof, the co-creator and executive producer of "Lost," was a major fan of "Y: The Last Man," a 60-issue series about a young escape artist who is the only man to survive a plague that wiped out every male mammal on Earth.

"I followed every issue of 'Y: The Last Man,' " Lindelof said. "I've been a huge Brian K. Vaughan fan for the better part of seven years now."

Lindelof showed "Y: The Last Man" to the other "Lost" show runner, executive producer Carlton Cuse.

"I basically introduced comic books to Carlton via Brian K. Vaughan," Lindelof said. "And I told him, 'We need a guy like this on the show, but I don't think he'd ever do it. I don't think he even works in L.A.' And the next thing we knew, he was on the show."

Much to his surprise, Lindelof learned that Vaughan was not only in Los Angeles but also a major "Lost" fan.

"I hadn't even written so much as a spec script at that point, and 'Lost' is one of the best shows on the air," said Vaughan, whose parents, Geoffrey and Catherine Vaughan, still live in Westlake. "So I figured my odds of getting hired were about one in a million. And they made the bizarre decision to bring me on board. In retrospect, I can see that I was jumping from one serialized medium to another. And the jump was made easier by being put in a room of veteran writers."

Co-written with Jeff Pinkner, his first "Lost" episode aired April 18, 2007. It was the 17th episode of the show's third season. It was followed by three more episodes in fourth season, two written with Drew Goddard and one with Elizabeth Sarnoff. "The Little Prince" was written with Melinda Hsu Taylor.

"The show is good in spite of me, not because of me," said Vaughan, who has a co-producer credit on "Lost." "I feel like I'm just starting to get good at writing TV scripts. I feel like I'm just learning how to do this."

Lindelof has a slightly different take on what Vaughan brings to the series.

"What hasn't he brought to the show?" Lindelof said. "He's just one the most creative minds working in the business, in any medium, and we are enormously grateful and lucky that we got him."

In addition to comic books and TV scripts, Vaughan has written plays, short stories and movie scripts.

"I tend to think that a good writer is a good writer, no matter what the form," Vaughan said. "When I was at St. Ignatius, I knew I wanted to be a writer and I wanted to write everything. But I think I'll always be first and foremost a comic book writer. It's the form that brought me to the dance."