OK, it’s official, I would go gay for Brian K. Vaughan. Y: The Last Man, Runaways, an arc on Buffy Season 8, Pride of Baghdad, it’s all brilliant. In all of his stories, he has proven himself a master of working with established characters as well as creating possibly the most original and exciting new list of series since Stan Lee and Jack Kirby hit the scene in the 60s. He manages to deal with a myriad of social issues while deftly sidestepping didacticism and preaching. Bearing that in mind, I was a little cautious when I picked up Ex Machina. After all, its concept, though brilliant and original (clichéd praise when it comes to Vaughan), dealt intricately with the political world. Ergo, many of the issues Vaughan could talk about subtly might be shoved to the front. Happily, BKV delivers yet again and yet another one of his creations has become one of my favorite series.

Ex Machina centers around Mitchell Hundred, a civil engineer who is left with the ability to communicate with machinery with moving parts (from guns to radios to handcuffs) after touching a mysterious glowing object floating under the Brooklyn Bridge. With the help of his two friends Rick Bradbury and Kremlin, Mitchell begins a short-lived career as the superhero The Great Machine (named for Thomas Jefferson’s term for American society).

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