Writer: Brian K. Vaughan
Artists: Tony Harris (p), Tom Feister (i), J.D. Mettler (colors)
Publisher: DC/Wildstorm
Collects issues #1-5
Plot: Civil Engineer Mitchell Hundred is injured by a mysterious explosion at one of the foundations of the Brooklyn Bridge. As a result of this event, he gains the power to command all “compound and complex machines.” With the help of his childhood mentor Kremlin and a police officer named Bradbury, Hundred uses this otherworldly ability to become the world’s first superhero, a jetpack-powered do-gooder known as “The Great Machine.” Within a year, however, it becomes clear to him that he is jeopardizing more lives than he is saving. Thus, he hangs up his costume (donning it only once more on September 11, 2001) and decides to use the celebrity gained from his heroing to launch a political career. With the help of City Councilman Wylie, he successfully runs for mayor of New York City. Ex Machina is the story of his four years in office, and “The First Hundred Days” recount this initial stage of his administration.
Comments: The New York over which Mayor Mitchell Hundred presides resembles the city as it exists in reality—more so than any of its countless avatars throughout the comic “universes” of DC and, especially, Marvel. While Spider-Man, Daredevil, and the Fantastic Four ply the hero trade in a city which meticulously replicates the architectural features of New York, Ex Machina punctures the Big Apple’s skin to extract the urban DNA that composes the city as it is lived rather than merely seen. This realism is all the more vital in that it must balance the one enormous difference writer Brian K. Vaughan’s New York has with the one it mirrors: On September 11th Vaughan’s hero, Mitchell Hundred, costumed one last time as The Great Machine, managed to stop United Airlines Flight 175, the hijacked 767 responsible for destroying the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Thus, the final page of the opening issue of this collection, and the series as a whole, reveals a New York skyline whose southern tip, while certainly ravaged, is still adorned with one of the titanic monoliths of the Twin Towers.
Such an alteration to one of the most traumatic events of recent history, indeed even the use of that event, is a dangerous creative undertaking carrying the risk of either trivializing it, or indulging in melodrama. It is the deep understanding and love for New York evidenced throughout this book that turns Ex Machina: The First Hundred Days into a superhero comic which engages reality on a level rarely seen in the genre. From the first time Mitchell Hundred speaks, his connection with New York’s history emerges in a story he addresses to the reader about one of the city’s most revered mayors, Fiorello H. LaGuardia, reading comics to citizens over the radio in 1945. But it is more than a knowledge of history that gives this fictional New York such depth. An engagement with the real city is present when Hundred responds to persistent Village Voice journalist Suzanne Padilla’s tart quip, “I see why my paper didn’t endorse you,” with the equally tart rejoinder, “I see why your paper is free”; or in his incredulous demand of his chief of staff regarding the Brooklyn Museum of Art, “Who the fuck calls it the BMA?”; or even in knowing that it’s the 2 and 3 trains that drop visitors off in front of that museum. These are not superficial details, nor are they arcana only for the initiated to appreciate. Instead, they are the details that root Ex Machina’s narrative in the soil of a living reality.
Complementing the powerful sense of place in the book is the emotional realism of Tony Harris’s masterful pencils. His simply rendered faces exhibit a complexity of meaning and expression that transforms both the most dramatic and the most functional scenes into compositions capable of standing on their own. A half-page panel in the third issue, featuring Kremlin pleading with Hundred to once again become The Great Machine, is dominated by Kremlin’s long face decorated with his ever-present dangling cigarette. The slightly asymmetrical eyes harbor a pathos that transcends the details of plot. In the same issue, a light-hearted two-page exchange between Hundred and his intern Journal Moore shows Harris gracefully capturing the thousand facial expressions that make up a conversation. The two figures are by turns suspicious, amused, flirtatious, and inspired, all with a minimum of the overbearing detail associated with “realistic” comic artists.
An excellent addition to this trade paperback is an appendix showing the book’s art “from reference to finish pages.” Tony Harris enlisted a full cast (including several Harrises) to physically set up the scenes of Vaughan’s dialogue. Certainly this accounts for the unusual liveliness of a book that contains a heavy amount of conversation. The section shows photos taken of the live actors, followed by Harris’s pencils, Tom Feister’s inks, and finally J.D. Mettler’s colors. This inside look is a revelation of not only the way in which the panels were composed, but also the part played by each member of the creative team in assembling a sublime visual experience. Wildstorm should be commended for adding value to trades while still managing to keep the price under ten dollars.
Ex Machina is an adult comic that deals with an adult world. Those looking for the escapism offered by many superhero titles will be disappointed. While the book is not without action or suspense, it is the careful development of situation, character, and setting—as much as it is the science-fiction elements—that drive this story. Like in his hit Y: The Last Man, Vaughan’s quirky wit leavens the darker undercurrents, resulting in as much laughter as reflection. Those who missed this series’ beginning would do well to pick up “The First Hundred Days” for a dose of realism in the superhero world.
What did you think of this book?
Have your say at the Line of Fire Forum!