Note: This post contains light spoilers for a comic that ended a decade ago.

So I almost died bringing this post to you. How does one die writing a post about a comic that finished its run back in 2010? Well, the comic started in 2004, well before I packed up and moved east. Imagine a half-dozen short boxes tumbling down from a tilting stack of even more short boxes and you would have a good idea of how comics almost killed me.

Why was I digging around in the depths of my already-read comics stacks? Well, it turns out that Oscar Isaac, owner of Poe Dameron’s lustrous hair, is going to produce and star in a TV version of Ex Machina, though the show will be called The Great Machine. The name change is both a nod to the main character’s superhero sobriquet and a way to differentiate Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris’s project from the 2014 film Ex Machina in which Isaac starred.

Mayor Hundred and friends

How did the comic book age?

I think it holds up pretty well, especially as it’s based on the idea of a major political figure elected because of his celebrity. Other reviewers are a little less convinced, believing Ex Machina‘s foundation, The Great Machine being elected because he unmasks after saving the second tower on 9/11, is shaky. I think that aspect of the story, and most of the others, continue to work well. So what’s it all about?

Genre-wise, we have a political procedural hiding behind a superhero story; think Mayor Carcetti parts of The Wire crossed with one of the more serious superhero movies. In addition to Mayor Hundred (the aforementioned major political figure), there are two “Scooby gangs” that move the story. The first is the inner circle of his administration. The second is composed of his “people in the chair” from his time as The Great Machine. I am eager to see the casting, especially that of Ivan, aka Kremlin, a Russian engineer who helped during The Great Machine’s superhero days but is against Hundred’s being mayor and turning his back on The Great Machine.

Will it make a good show?

The hardest part of crafting the series will be figuring out the timelines. The first story arc (five issues) takes place in at least five separate time periods excluding the framing sequence. This type of jumping can work in comic books if the creative team is composed of skilled storytellers, as Ex Machina‘s is. The book also works by embracing both the genres it inhabits: a superhero comic and a political procedural. The show will have to do the same at least as skillfully if not more so.

The Great Machine

How about Oscar Isaac?

How do I think Oscar Isaac will do as Mayor Hundred? Pretty damn well. Mayor Hundred is an engineer and looks at the world like one. He has the innocence of someone who really does want to do right, even if doing right is not politically feasible, and he struggles with those limitations. We’ve seen Isaac pull off a similar personality type with Poe Dameron, a role that will have prepped him well to be Mayor Hundred.