Ex Machina, Volume 2: Tag

[sawyl]

It's taken me a while, but I've finally managed to fit in the second trade in Brian K Vaughan's excellent Ex Machina series.

There are two things Mayor Michell Hundred won't discuss: his superpowers and his private life. Unfortunately, after agreeing to marry the deputy's brother and his boyfriend, Hundred's own marital status comes under scrutiny and he decides to head out on a date with Voice journo Suzanne Padilla to quell the rumours, putting his private life well and truly on the public agenda. On the superpowers front things are equally, if not quite so publicly, bad. A glyph first seen on the machine that turned our mild mannered hero from hapless bridge engineer into the Great Machine and last seen in the possession of his disillusioned NSA handler, has turned up next to the eviscerated corpse of a dog and apparently induced the suicide of a young woman. Not good.

Question is, can Mitchell manage the inevitable outcry over his decision to endorse same sex marriage, keep a lid on his involvement with the subway problems and sort out his problems with Suzanne? Well, what do you thing? He is the Great Machine, after all....

Verdict? Another quality comic from Vaughan that neatly blends the political with the super. Possibly not quite as snappy on the dialog front as Y: Last Man, but the character and political stuff more than makes up for it — I liked the way the geeky Hundred mishandled his date, to the point of being half-jokingly called a sociopath. I also liked the way we got to find out more about his past life as the Great Machine and I was impressed by the delicate way his actions on September 11th were handled, all oblique references rather than full on explicit stuff, with the suggestion that he used his kudos to get himself elected mayor.