Ex Machina

What I like most about Ex Machina is that it has the guts to have an opinion (even if that opinion does tend towards South Park republican-style "neither position is right, the answer is in the middle" on a large number of issues). Too many political shows try to somehow write about politicians without actually adopting a political stance, which isn't just futile, its disingenuous. Ex Machina takes real issues and has the character have a clear opinion on them, without equivocating. It also handles the impact of the superhero stuff on politics really well (loved the joke about "people blame me for bush being reelected, but that would have happened anyway"). The tackling of 9/11 was incredibly brave.

The pure superhero stuff didn't work quite as well, and at times felt almost out of place. Its like, in the middle of the fascinating west-wing with a twist type stuff, there's a fairly generic murder mystery and unlike the political stuff its not fresh or new.

I used to have a buddy who criticized photo tracing as looking like Tom Goes to the Mayor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Goes_To_The_Mayor) and to an extent I agree. Its an easy shortcut to realistically rendered people, but there's always something slightly stilted about the people being drawn, like they're posing even in scenes where they're just talking.

Ex Machina doesn't completely manage to avoid this, but it mitigates the problem by consistently using movie-type shots and angles-- extreme closeups or shots from much lower or higher than you would otherwise expect keep it visually engaging. More importantly though, the lighting is excellent. Lighting is something that rarely gets talked about in comics outside of Batman and noir comics, but Ex Machina does a great job of matching tone to time period and event in a way that highlights the exact emotion of the situation. Sepia green for a childhood flashback, TV-blue for a presidential announcement, horror movie purples and blacks underscoring the murder scenes.

The dialogue is excellent, and the characters, especially Mitchell, all feel unique and fleshed out without resorting to stock. Mitchell can seem a little too idealized at times, but the superhero angle is a plausible way for him to have become mayor without hopelessly compromising himself.


All in all I like Ex Machina, but not quite as much as I might have had he chosen to just eschew the murder/conspiracy/where are his powers from angle and instead focused more on the politics.