Ex Machina: The First Hundred Days SYNOPSIS
Set in our modernday real world, EX MACHINA tells the story of civil engineer Mitchell Hundred, who becomes America's first living, breathing superhero after a strange accident gives him amazing powers. Eventually tiring of risking his life merely to help maintain the status quo, Mitchell retires from masked crimefighting and runs for Mayor of New York City, winning by a landslide! But Mayor Hundred has to worry about more than just budget problems and an antagonistic governor, especially when a mysterious hooded figure begins assassinating plow drivers during the worst snowstorm in the city's history! SUGGESTED FOR MATURE.
FROM THE CRITICS
Douglas Wolk - The Washington Post
Vaughan ingeniously sets up the entire series as overlapping flashbacks to the beginning of Hundred's term and earlier. As the series opens, it's 2005 and something awful has happened, but we don't know what. The book goes on to suggest that the disaster has something to do with the folly of dressing up in a costume and trying to improve the world as a vigilante, or perhaps the folly of dressing up in a suit and trying to improve the world through politics.
Publishers Weekly
Set somewhere between The West Wing and an alternative future, this tale asks the question: What if the mayor of New York was a superhero? Vaughan (Y: The Last Man) and Harris (Starman) answer with intelligence and dash. In classic superhero origin, Mitchell Hundred is just another civil engineer until an encounter with a glowing light under the Brooklyn Bridge gives him the power to talk to machines. Fast forward three years: after a famed stint as a superhero, Hundred has just been elected mayor of New York and must deal with not only the colorful cast of characters that make up his staff but also a host of crises: a PR disaster set off by an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum; a crippling blizzard; and, most worryingly, a serial killer who's bumping off the city's snow plow drivers. Vaughan cleverly adapts real news stories-New York mayoral politics, the Sensations art scandal-and plausibly fits them into a world where superheroes exist, but are forbidden by the NSA to talk about their powers, while adding surprising twists and turns. Harris's gritty, charismatic characters give the story further appeal. This vastly entertaining first collection should have readers eager to read future volumes. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
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