In case I haven't made it clear before, let me start off by saying clearly that this is absolutely my favorite comic book of the moment. Vaughan has just started peeling the onion here, revealing bits and pieces of the past while moving forward with the characters' futures, but I'm fascinated by everything we're seeing and impressed with the amount of potential there seems to be in the story. These days, we're all talking about (and probably all sick of) politics thanks to an upcoming and very heated Presidential election race, but Ex Machina is less about those kind of politics and more about the politics of everyday life, how government relates to people, to art, to crime, to the business of making life as smooth as possible. It's also very much about personal politics, as we see in this issue when we learn a bit more about the Great Machine "team" and a lot more about the perpetrator of the murders in the first few issues.
Much as I love the political stuff of the modern day Ex Machina, I'm also really glad that Vaughan is continuing these flashbacks to Mitchell Hundred's superhero career. His approach is to look at a superhero in a more realistic context, and while he doesn't go too super-real (having Hundred's rocket-pack explode because of the flames around him or something like that), there's definitely more of a sense of how a hero might be treated: equal parts adoration and scorn. Credit also goes to the art team for a spectacular little fire scene, with special credit to JD Mettler for the atmospheric reds surrounding the flaming room.
The most fascinating aspect of this issue, though, is the examination of the relationship between Kremlin, Mitchell and Bradbury. We've seen where all of these guys are in the modern day, so it's a lot of fun to see them back when they were a little younger, working together to bring the Great Machine to life. Kremlin's earnestness about the whole thing, which comes off as almost naive from the older man thanks to a foreign perspective, has a heart-breaking weight to it thanks to the surprise at the end of the book, and I love the playful banter between Bradbury and Mitchell.
The rest of the issue is given over to the furtherance of a couple other aspects of the plot, namely the mad bomber/gunman and the controversial painting. These scenes come to life thanks to Vaughan's gift for dialogue, and it's kind of amazing how he packs so much information into the pages without it feeling too dense or overwritten. The conversations are there to develop the characters, to show how they think and act, but they also provide a ton of information about the conflicts at hand. I'm especially pleased with the confrontation between Journal and Trista Braving, which shows Journal to be smart and persuasive, certainly worthy of the job she was given in the last issue, and an interesting character to boot.
Let me once again stress that while Vaughan is a big part of what I love about Ex Machina, one cannot discount what the art team of Tony Harris, Tom Feister and JD Mettler bring to the book. Every shot of The Great Machine is fantastic, with a detail and photorealism that reminds me of John Cassaday or Bryan Hitch taking on some of the Marvel icons, but that touch of the superhero pales beside their work on the characters themselves. I love the expressive nature of their characters' faces, and I love the detail put into the clothing as well, whether it's Journal's weird-ass winter hat or a little detail on Mayor Hundred's tie that you notice in retrospect. Oh, and that last page holds a lot of weight and emotion, all while maintaining a mystery as to what that emotion means and how it will play out in the next issue.
