Broken Frontier

Ex Machina rolls on impressively as we dive deeper into Mayor Hundred’s past as The Great Machine and are promised answers about his mysterious origin.

The book begins with The Great Machine in a bit of panic mode after he’s saved the second Tower on September 11, 2001. He is faced with a conundrum of emotion and public service that every superhero no doubt would face in his particular situation. Then the story flashes forward to his days as Mayor Hundred, where gay marriage is the current hot political topic and someone or something linked with the Mayor’s past is brutally killing people and animals.

The Tag storyline has thus far been even more impressive than its predecessor--The First Hundred Days--and that is saying quite a lot. The plot has been an inspiring potpourri of topical politics, superheroics, intriguing mystery and fascinating horror. And as fantastic as it has been to watch Mitchell Hundred’s common sense politics and the developing mystery regarding the artifact that gave him power over machines, it is Vaughan’s penchant for creating wonderful and real character dialogue that drives this issue. The banter between Hundred and Bradbury is always a joy to read in this book, and there is more where that came from this issue. Even though I really don’t like politics due to its seemingly diehard partisanship in this country, I enjoy the way Vaughan continually brings up a new version of an old scene that makes sense to those of us under no particular political persuasion. Better yet, it doesn’t come off as overbearing or preachy.

I’ll be honest; when I picked up issue #1 of Ex Machina, I wasn’t particularly fond of the art. It seemed a little stiff and the coloring a bit too muted for a book that was trying to pull off a mixture of the fantastic and real world. Since then Harris, Feister and Mettler have won me over. Harris has shown that he can draw even the subtlest of emotions up to action and horror (and what an impressive piece of horror he’s produced at the end of this one) with an outstanding sense of photorealism. Colorist J.D. Mettler also deserves a gold star for this issue. His contribution to the aforementioned horror piece gives it a degree of eeriness that could make the skin crawl.

There are a lot of great books out there right now, but this one is near the top of the heap. Honestly, Ex Machina is one of the best three books on the market right now. You don’t have to trust my word; just read some reviews (pretty much anywhere) of the back issues. Every bit of praise Vaughan and company have received is well earned.

-Kert McAfee