Broken Frontier

The story of Jack Phearson is finally told. Will The Great Machine live up to the name?

A radio talk show exchange on his position on the death penalty takes Mayor Mitchell Hundred back two years. Suddenly it’s 2001, less than six months before The Great Machine becomes a legend by saving one of the WTC towers. But for now, though he’s certainly The Machine, there isn’t much that’s great about him. He’s just a superhero—the first real one ever—still trying to figure out what that means. For him it’s not at all like comic books make it seem. Rescue someone from a perilous perch atop the Brooklyn Bridge, and you’ll get a mouthful—all of it bad and much of riddled with expletives. Duck out on a primo media moment because duty calls and the gal with the mike wants to know what you have to hide. And speak too loosely with that magic machine voice and there’s someone camped out with a parabolic mike recording you. His name is Jack Phearson, and in The Machine he doesn’t see a hero, but patents galore and huge dollar signs. But what he doesn’t see is how the The Machine’s alien-spawn voice will change him, too, soon giving him special powers over all things living in the way that Hundred can control all things electronic. A showdown is inevitable, and the first between the two does not go well for The Machine. Not only is he caught off-guard, he may have given up the most important thing he has to the man who will become his dreaded archenemy.

Few writers in comics today are as automatic as Brian K. Vaughan. He rarely disappoints and the writing in this first of the two-part Ex Machina Special is trademark Vaughan. Non-linear narrative is his specialty, and couching the flashback in terms of the death penalty debate without actually having a debate or even mentioning Hundred’s position on the issue is a bold stroke that amplifies the rest of the story. But while this hovers in the background, Vaughan skillfully foregrounds a deeper antagonism—that between nature (Phearson) and machine (Hundred)—and develops the opposition dramatically with a skillful mix of pacing and dialogue. We’re not preached to, even though Phearson gets rather long-winded on his soapbox. Rather, we’re drawn into an ages-old battle between two equally powerful but mutually exclusive visions of mankind’s place in the world. Indeed, Vaughan crafts this theme so well that for a moment we forget who’s the hero and who’s the villain. However, as heavy as the ideas are in this issue, Vaughan lightens the mood at times with some interesting character moments, many of them sparkling with wicked one-liners and hilarious turns-of-phrase.

Tony Harris has put an indelible stamp on this series, but penciller Chris Sprouse and inker Karl Story do an excellent job of capturing the look and feel of Ex Machina while adding something of their own that makes for an intriguing change of pace. Sprouse’s lines are tighter than Harris’. While his figures may not be as fluid, his economy of line is well-suited for the stark differences between Hundred and Phearson and the hero/villain showdown that takes up most of this issue. Karl Story’s inks add a depth and texture we haven’t seen in Ex Machina before, while J. D. Mettler’s color palette adds even more with a smooth polish of sober but complex hues.

This is an excellent jumping-on issue for those who may have heard that Ex Machina is one of the finest comics on the stands but never took the plunge.