Ostensibly, Ex Machina has to appeal to Conservative comic book readers, so Vaughan fills his Mayor Hundred’s mouth with lines like “I’ve met George W. Bush and he’s a good man.” It makes Vaughan a wuss and Ex Machina’s protagonist an idiot. It’s hard to read a comic book with an idiot for a protagonist, but until Vaughan’s Bush-licking issue, it was a good comic book, so I’ve stuck with it. But no more.
Road to War is about the anti-Iraq invasion protests in New York City. Unlike reality (which Ex Machina is reasonably seeped in, besides the alien technology-enhanced mayor), there’s a terrorist attack on the protests. Even with the attack and Vaughan’s cheap device to personally involve his characters in it, Road to War isn’t bad for the first half or so. It felt like Ex Machina did in the first ten or so good issues, like “The West Wing” with superheroics. But it all falls apart--and not because Vaughan’s lame apologist politics have gotten worse (the guy presenting that Saddam/Al Queda connection to the Mayor’s supposedly intelligent staff, the Mayor’s active bigotry against Muslims)--but because it all goes too fast. Vaughan introduces reactionary hate crimes at the end of the second issue, then wraps them up immediately in the third. He gives the Mayor paranoia about supervillains coming back to get at him (even though it makes no real sense for him to have supervillains, since he was supposed to be the only superhero) and does nothing with it. He even bookends Road to War with a character relationship--trashing it, of course--but not taking into account his present action was only four days.
The most discernible difference between Ex Machina today and back when it started is laziness. Tony Harris’s art looks lazy in these issues too. It’s always been photo-referenced, but now it’s visibly static and uninteresting. Characters make these gestures to give them something to do and it’s the same gestures over and over again. I remember when Ex Machina started and Vaughan said he wanted to do fifty issues and I hoped he’d make it. I never thought he’d burn out after nine, but he did. The ten more issues I gave Ex Machina after that one is a testament to how impressive Vaughan’s work used to be, but there’s just no point anymore.