Ex Machina

I had heard of Brian K. Vaughan's "Ex Machina" series, but wasn't initially interested in reading it because it was already praised by fans and critics, and didn't want to have all that praise on my head if I got into it. Now that I've read the first trade, I was really blown away by not only the story and the dialogue, but Harris' art as well.

I've read other of Vaughan's works besides his mainstream superhero titles, like "Pride of Baghdad", so the politcal nature of the Ex Machina is no surprise. The concept of superheroes functioning in the real world is nothing new, Watchmen being the obvious example, and applying it in a post 9/11 world might be something really hard to do, but Vaughan really pulls it off. I just remember a few weeks ago at one of our smaller Comic Club meetings we had our usual comic chats, and I just remember I brought up Frank Miller's upcoming Batman vs. Al Queada project which lead to a fun conversation how terrorists exist in comics worlds, especially DC when you have godlike characters like Superman. Mitchell is a great character with his positive and negative qualities. I especially liked the flashback sequences to him as a young kid reading comics and his dream of working for DC. In some ways, he's kind of a template for Nathan Pettreli from Heroes, maybe not completely, but the basic idea of a politician with super powers.

Visually, the artist Tony Harris does an amazing job capturing the look and feel of the varous eras from the past to the present. I love the design of the Great Machine costume, very reminicent of those old pulp serials of the 1930's. I noticed in the flashback sequences the coloring was more desaturated, like we were looking at something old from a long time ago, compared to the present day sequences where the colors are darker, bolder, and stand out more. I also liked the dialogue balloons he used for when Mitchell talks to the machines, the green font color, boxy word balloons, and computerish font.
Not suprisingly, Harris worked on the last few issues of the last Iron Man series, and has an upcoming project at Marvel involving Spider-Man's early days after getting his powers but before his uncle died. It should be interesting to see how his style differs from what he does with Ex Machina. It's supposed to be released this January.

And on a comics sidenote, I'm reading Persepolis 2 for another class, and in one chapter, Satrapi mentions that tulips were signs to honor the sacrifice of the martyrs. So now the mystery behind why the tulip is on the cover has now become a little clearer. Just thought you'd liked to know.