Falling in love all over again

[stubbleupdate]

I've been thinking about Ex Machina recently. Part of it is because I'm mainlining my girlfriend's trades of Y The Last Man (I'm only just finished Girl on Girl, so please no spoilers) and finding that it's jolly excellent. It's very BKV, which is... well, duh, but he does have a distinct voice for his own characters. A number of the women in Y could show up in Ex Machina and not be out of place.

The other reason is that, like all good science fiction writers, BKV predicted the future with New York state's gay marriage laws.

I'm not sure that there's a writer on the go just now who could write about social and moral issues in the same way that BKV does. It's never preachy, it's never the case of "This character says it, so their viewpoint is the right one", it's just a discussion of lots of different ideas and values. His books feel like the smartest books I've read. His characters seem real, like actual people (And I'm impressed at the range of characters to come into play in Y) with their own fears and hopes. And the dialogue is real too. I don't meant to say that it's, like, Bendis real, you know. I do mean to say that it sounds a lot more like things that could conceivably come out of people's mouths than most every other book.

Here's a clip from The First Hundred Days, where Hizzoner Mayor Mitchell Hundred survives an assassination attempt.




Later, Hundred takes Suzanne out for dinner. This is one of the scenes that really does it for me with Ex Machina. Well, This one and the PLEASE scene. And the end of #1.







He is not shitting her.

THE. STARS. ARE. DOWN

Comments

[hivemindcomics]

The silent panel after she asks him if hes shitting her says alot when you find out he might not necessarly of been shitting her.

LOVE EX MACHINA!

[mrstatham]

Yeah.. The scene later on in the storyarc opened up a lot of questions, really, some of which I still don't entirely get.

[hivemindcomics]

SPOILERS:

I read into it that he's actually telling the truth here. Hes not learnt everything yet so doesn't make the connection to what was actually going on with the fact the machine was from another world.
So the tech the box was made from obv crossed (may as well call it) The Bleed; and it is allowing radio signals from another world (maybe its original world) to be picked up over here.

[rainspirit]

I'm 99% certain that it was pre-suspension scans_daily that first introduced me to the awesomeness of Ex Machina, and onto Y: The Last Man from then on. Very happy I got to know this series, even though BKV seems to have a tendency to end his stories on increasingly sad, bitter notes.

[stubbleupdate]

There's a very good chance that it was my posts that you read on Ex Machina.

I spent ages compiling an accurate chronology of 9/11 from Ex Machina and posting that whole Tuesday in the correct order.

Then we were shut down on the weekend after.

[grazzt]

I would really love to see that, if you were willing to bring it together again. The 9/11 bits are the most powerful parts of Ex Machina I've seen, and probably the best reaction to 9/11 in comics that has been written so far.

[stubbleupdate]

It shouldn't be too tough. I've still got them all collected in a folder somewhere. They're 26 different images though...

I'm planning on doing it before the end of the week.

[rainspirit]

Yeah, were you the one who posted Agnotti versus the bank heist? That may have been part of what sold it for me.

Man, I remember those days... :(

[stubbleupdate]

Agnotti is great.

The fact that she's allowed a history and her own story and to not be the villain is such a good part of Ex Machina.

There's a trend in comics from fans and creators where characters who are opposed to "our heroes" are painted as baddies.

Victoria Hand telling Nick Fury to sort his stuff out? Baddy.
Maria Hill against Captain America? Automatic Baddy because Captain America is always right.
J Jonah Jameson and his Spider-Man, Threat or Menace? Sort of a baddy and painted as an antagonist to Spidey.

[meatwhichdreams]

You did a great service to the internet with those posts. They just grabbed me - so powerful and fascinating. I think I even read some multiple times, returning to see the pages and the comments. Plucked in their prime...! ~wipes away tear~

[blackruzsa]

I'm in the process of reading Y: The Last Man. I only borrowed the first from the library but I finished it in two shakes and I regretted not getting the rest for weekend reading.

As for Ex Machina, it interested me and confused me the time I found it on S_D but now you're making me want to pick it up too.

[grazzt]

Yeah, our library has all the trades of Y: The Last Man as well. They're missing several of Ex Machina, though, which is putting me off of reading what they do have.

[rainspirit]

How far are you in Y? Loved that series so much, but MAN does it go to some heavy places.

[blackruzsa]

The collection ended on volume 11 (in the library), where it ended with that 'meh'.

Do you know what happened to them in the Philippines? They didn't have 2 and.... 5? Or was that 6?

Could you answer me in private message? Poster doesn't want Y spoilers.

[equinox216]

My first two TPB purchases were Ultimate Spiderman and Ultimate XMen, based on interest in the alternaverses shown to me "here" (well, old S_D), but my third was Ex Machina, on the strength of your posts.

I still haven't gotten all of the series (my wife tends to cherrypick from the more recent additions to my Amazon wishlist for giftgiving holidays), but it's definitely getting completed eventually.

What I really respect about BKV's approach to opposing social opinions throughout Ex Machina is that whoever's the opposition is still a PERSON. Unless they're set up as a straight-up villain/criminal/two-bit Snidely Whiplash (like the governor's office guy), the OpFor expresser is always treated as another goddamned human being, with depth and reasons for their preference, rather than a two-dimensional strawman for the authorial voice to rail against.

[mrstatham]

The thing is, not even the Governor's Office guy, Trip, I think his name was, is that bad a person. I think they'd naturally be wary of someone like Hundred, who did come out of nowhere, literally, to win the election (big questions raised there, of course), and now they've got to put up with someone who isn't going to go along with what they want all the time, and if they desire, can actively threaten you by proposing they shut off your pacemaker, etc.

But I do agree that everyone in Ex Machina seemed to have a valid point of view, even if they conflicted or agreed with Mitch's points of view. The only time I found it somewhat hamfisted was the Iraq war protests, since that felt set up specifically to give us some drama with the most likely member of Hundred's office to protest.

[stubbleupdate]

Which was the best UXM trade that BKV wrote?

I saw that he drew two with Stuart Immonen.

[equinox216]

Bendis did UXM, not BKV.

I really enjoyed most of them, to be honest. They all had good moments. The 'condensed' clone saga was pretty well done, and the Immonen issues were all pretty agreeable.

Ult-XMen, however, rapidly became just irredeemable, even before the 'Ultimatum' Blob-eating-Wasp thing.

[stubbleupdate]

Oh. Amazon reckons that he wrote
Vol.10 with Andy Kubert, Vol.11 with Immonen andVol.9 with Brandon Peterson

[richardak]

I loved this comic. Don't get me wrong, I liked Y, but this was easily one of my favorite comics ever. Partly because I'm a native New Yorker, but also because it was just excellent.

[stubbleupdate]

#40 was amazing.

[newnumber6]

You got a broken link there where you point out BKV's prophetic abilities.

[stubbleupdate]

Thanks for the heads up. That's it sorted now.

[q99]

I love all of Ex Machina *except* for the ending, which I feel dropped the ball.

[stubbleupdate]

The ending works. If you don't like it, the ending took care of that too.

There are thousands of Hundreds in the Bulk. For every one that made the decisions that "our" Hundred did, there was one that went a different way.

What we got wasn't THE canon ending. It was AN ending. And it wasn't even an ending; it was a pause.

The final issue set that all out.

[q99]

That's not really what I got from it- at the least, I'd have preferred to see one of the alternatives, and while alternatives existed, that they were there wasn't really a focus.


Anyway, I'm not just talking about Michael's choices which I didn't buy, but the identities of the world behind the powers. They just seemed so bland compared to the leadup.

[meatwhichdreams]

I must say, as much as I absolutely adored this series, I have to agree that the ending just fizzled out for me. I almost am afraid to reread the series because I don't want to lose that excitement it gave me. Just a very strange payoff.

[jjgalahad]

I really, really wanted to like this series more than I actually did. It had some very clever ideas and interesting moments but it never really clicked for me.

I felt like he kept using his characters to insert annoying "Did You Know?" factoids about New York, politics, history and/or whatever random Wikipedia page fancied his interest that day via forced dialogue that totally took me right out of the story. That, and I just didn't find Mitchell Hundred anywhere near as likeable as anybody in Y: The Last Man or Runaways.

Incidentally, did they ever explain why the hell Mitchell was meditating on memories of his undressed mother in that one scene? Because that was hella creepy.

[blackruzsa]

Off hand question...
As I am speeding through Y: The Last Man, I notice in vol 8 they said they were in the Philippines.There was no Vol 6 to borrow, so I have no idea what happened there.

And my internet is crap so my research comes up with pages that don't load, so what happened exactly? Just wondering.

[stubbleupdate]

I don't know what happens. I've not finished the series and I'd rather not be spoiled for it. Could you have Y discussions elsewhere please?

[blackruzsa]

Just wondering if you'd read. Otherwise, I won't spoil anything else.

[fifthie]

Ex Machina is by and large the same Centrist's Fallacy shit you get from anyone ever who, whenever politics comes up, dutily intones that they are ~Socially Liberal, But, Economically Conservative~. It'd be a nice fantasy for comics, if only so many people didn't insist on taking it seriously in real life.

[stubbleupdate]

Centrists' Fallacy?

Please enlighten me