Because we want to keep things fresh, we’ve decided to bring you an edition of The Pull List by guest reviewer Dave Press today. Keep it here tomorrow for another guest reviewer! –Ed

EX MACHINA #45
Rating: 7.5

My favorite series of the last couple of years is beginning to wind down and I’m getting quite sad about it. This issue picks up where we left off with New York City Mayor Mitchell Hundred discussing the effects of the previous arc and how Village Voice reporter Suzanne Padilla may be on to the White Box.

Our Mayor who can talk and control machines created The White Box around his election night.  Padilla was convinced that it helped elect Hundred as Mayor.  What happened was the White Box went off and implanted itself in Padilla’s brain, in a similar manner that the device that gave Hundred his powers.

Ex Machina is essentially The West Wing mixed in with some super heroics and tracks a retired super hero during his first and only term as New York City mayor. With five issues left, Padilla possessed by the White Box, she is slowly picking off members of Hundred’s cabinet.  Who knows what she has planned or for that matter Vaughan.

The question we have now is what will Vaughan be doing after Ex Machina concludes? He’s left the writer’s room for Lost and his spec script, Roundtable, is a modern day re-imagining of the Arthur legend.  To say the least his life as a writer is expanding and if he has any time for comics now post-Ex Machina I’ll be quite pleased.

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Happy Wednesday! This week there is a great mix and mash of comics, and we hope you’ll at least give a look at a few of these. First off: ever wonder what it would be like if the writer/artist of The Dark Knight Returns teams with the artist of Watchmen? Now you’ll know this week as Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons team up for The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the 21st century. The thing is PRICEY though, so at keep an eye out for a cheaper version when it hits stands.

From DC Comics this week, we have Philip Tan replacing Frank Quitely on Batman and Robin. Its worth getting to see the difference. There’s a Quitely cover at least. The good news is that Grant Morrison’s collaborator on Seaguy Cameron Stewart will be joining the team following Tan. Fortunately, Quitely is staying on as the cover artist, and every week he turns in a new cover I can’t help but make that my computer background. Just look at that sucker.

Also, from DC is Blackest Night #3, this juicy and horrific tale is crazy weird.  Almost Howling or Piranha-like but in comics. Not cheesy horror, but outlandish horror.

The final five issues of Brian K. Vaughan’s brilliant Ex Machina series starts this week and I kinda feel like I did when Y: The Last Man was ending. Something really special is ending and we’re never going to see it again.  Well, that’s a mixed bag. Though we’re going to have movie versions of these comics I just mentioned, Vaughan is slipping away from comics. With his Roundtable script being on this year’s Black List and selling that script for six figures, plus leaving the Lost writer’s room, I can only imagine that hopefully this means more comics for Vaughan but I fear that’s probably not the case.

From Marvel, the only thing really worth it is Ed Brubaker’s Captain America Reborn. What I like about Ed Brubaker is that while he’s a slow burn and you have to be ultra committed to sticking with him, and this book’s case it is painfully so, its always worth it in the end.  Its time to move the story forward, we get Captain America is Quantum Leaping through his life, now lets move forward from that.

As always, we here at The Flickcast care about what you read, so leave us a comment and let us know what you liked/didn’t like from this week’s comics. For a more complete list of what comes out this week, Midtown Comics has a great listing of everything.

These days its sometimes hard finding good comics to read every week and even harder finding the money to pay for all of them. There are a lot of comics coming out each week but fortunately, we here at The Flickcast care about what you read and what you spend your money on.  So, with that in mind, there’s a lighter load of comics this week from a superhero mayor of New York City, to a jerk from the future to gigantic fighting robots.

My first recommendation this week is Ex Machina #42, written by Lost writer/producer Brian K. Vaughan and drawn by the brilliant Tony Harris (Starman). Easily my favorite book on the stands now, it tells the story of Mitchell Hundred the first super-hero known as the Great Machine who can get machines to do anything he wants. 

After 9/11, Hundred decides he’s merely maintaining the status quo as a superhero and decides to reveal his identity on national television and declare his candidacy for Mayor of New York City. Of course, he wins, and this comic is about his time in office.

Part West Wing and part super-hero action, with only eight issues left, I can’t wait to see how this story concludes.

My second recommendation is X-Men Origins: Wolverine producer and friend of The Flickcast Jeff Katz’s book Booster Gold is a high flying adventure telling the story of the 25th Century football star who travels back in time to fill his large ego.  Co-written with Flash: Rebirth star Geoff Johns the trade paperback, out tomorrow, is a classic fun adventure comic where Booster must act exactly as he normally does, like a dick, in order restore the timeline. 

Also, but probably inadvertently, he causes the creation of the Sinestro Corps. They don’t make comics this fun anymore.

My third and final recommendation is Rick Remender and Eric Nguyen’s comic Gigantic. Which is part Japanese Giant Robot vs Giant Monster Battle Royale and part Mojo-verse storyline from old 80′s X-Men comics. 

To be honest, I don’t know what to make of this comic besides saying “You remember this guy: Ultraman?” Yeah, its kinda like that, except not cheezy.

If these comic recommendations don’t suit your fancy, be sure to check out the excellent Midtown Comics list and order there. They will even mail your comics right to your door.