Signs and Symbols

Today looks like it might not be a total dead loss after all: after two years, I've finally got around to correcting the sign above my desk so that it has the right number. It's been wrong ever since I delegated the task to The Boy and, in the process of putting up the signs, he managed to confuse 4 with 2. I guess it's true what they say: if you want something doing properly, it's best to do it yourself.

Worth getting up for

Had an early birthday present today: my promo has been signed, sealed and delivered without any need for effort on my part and best of all, it's been totally back dated to the start of November. Talk about super shiny...

The First Hundred Days

When Mitchell Hundred touches a funky fresh weirdness tucked away beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, he suddenly gains the ability to speak to machines and to dream up cool gadgets fit to make Batman drool. Trouble is, he's not all that good at being a superhero, despite his attempt to prevent 9/11, so he decides to retire The Great Machine and knocks vigilantism on the head in favour of politics.

Not, of course, that politics turns out to be any easier. After facing an assassination attempt, the new mayor gets caught up in a controversial art exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art which features a racist portrait of Honest Abe. While he's attempting to deal with the flak from that, a snowstorm hits NYC and someone is out killing snow plough drivers. Maybe being a superhero wasn't so bad after all.

Ex Machina is a nice take on the superhero comic: it's not every day that your average comic book hero admits to being troubled by doubts about the merits of brute force — most of them seem to come from the to-hell-with-consequences school. It's also nice, given the tendency of most superheros towards tyranny, to see a hero going into politics for all the right reasons and generally doing the Right Thing, no matter how frustrated he may be by the process.