The futile campaign of Brian K. Vaughan

On LewRockwell.com last month, fellow nonvoter Gene Callahan filed this from a recent Dead concert:

“... I was perturbed by the brief lecture Bob Weir and Phil Lesh delivered on voting, just before performing their encore. Weir told the audience to make sure to register and get to the polls this fall. ‘It couldn’t be more important,’ he proclaimed. There were, he noted, tables at which one could register right there at the show. (Isn’t there some law against asking 18-year-olds who are under the influence of several hits of acid what their party affiliation is?)”

Actually, ineffective “Rock the Vote” campaigns have become pretty commonplace. But this summer, it seems, there was a very uncommon effort to fire up comic book readers to get out and register to vote.

Yesterday, while web-surfing, I found a six-month-old interview with Brian K. Vaughan, perhaps best known as one of Marvel’s current stable of X-Men writers. Vaughan has launched a new series for Wildstorm called Ex Machina; it’s about a superhero who hangs up his tights to become mayor of New York. Copies of the debut issue, Vaughan revealed in the interview, would be in short supply. “So to make sure that only the most deserving people get a copy of our first issue,” he said, “it will only be sold to readers who are registered to vote. Our protagonist is independent, but...I don't care which party you choose to affiliate yourself with, if any, as long as you're registered. ... And yes, this is open to residents of all democratic, socialist, U.S.-occupied, whatever, countries, just as long as you're registered.”

I couldn’t resist. I called my local comics retailer this morning.

“Did you sell many copies of Ex Machina #1?” I asked.

“Some,” he said, adding that sales of the book had been good but not spectacular when it was released in June.

“How exactly did you enforce Brian Vaughan’s sales restriction against comic collectors who aren’t registered to vote? Did you ask buyers for proof of voter registration?”

My retailer had never heard of such a “silly” policy. Nor would he have enforced it if he had. “I sell comics,” he told me, “not lessons in civic responsibility.”

Note to Mr. Vaughan: Stick to writing comics and quit trying to dick with the marketplace.