Having reached the finale of Ex Machina’s comic run, I can safely say that there was a pretty decent superhero comic in it, and a very good political comic in it as well, and they fought like cats in a sack for the spotlight on a non-stop basis that precluded any kind of rational pacing of either of those major storyline aspects. Which is unfortunate, since it colors my opinion negatively on what otherwise might have been two differently good things. I admit to having no way to be sure whether the pacing would work better if read in a chunk, and perhaps that is relevant?

Term Limits describes the end of the ongoing storyline that explains how Mitchell Hundred got his powers in the first place as well as the looming threat to humanity that is so intricately tied into those powers, and it simultaneously describes the end of his mayoral life in New York City, and then just for fun, it follows through the next three or four years to see how he and everyone else turned out. Y’know, pretty much exactly what you would expect the conclusion of a story to do. So yay for structure. There is something about the transparency of the political and historical wish-fulfillment of the overall plot that doesn’t sit that well for me, just as it always has not, but it really is just the transparency aspect; if wish-fulfillment bothered me on its own merits, I couldn’t have sat through the first episode of The West Wing, much less the entire series. But all in all, these complaints are minor, and I’m glad I read the series.

…except for the part where I can’t help looking back on Y: The Last Man with a more critical eye now and being skeptical of its own pacing issues that I hadn’t really considered the first time. Oh, well.