Author: Brian K Vaughan
Publisher: DC Comics
Rating: WORTHY!
Pencils and covers by Tony Harris
Inks by Tom Feister
Colors by JD Mettler.
This began as a pretty cool comic but by volume three it had become rather tedious. I can recommend volumes one and two, however, which are funny, original, and entertaining. I doubt I will continue it now though, especially since it runs to some fifty issues! Be warned that this novel has adult situations and language. It's not for young kids or for people who are easily offended.
The premise here is that Mitchell Hundred, a New York City engineer, was somehow changed or infected, or whatever, by an artifact found in the river. He adopted a persona known as The Great Machine, after something Thomas Jefferson said (either that or it's right out of Babylon 5) about the great machine of government or of society depending on which of his quotes you refer to. The dick-head was obsessed with great machines in an era where great machines were virtually non-existent - go figure!.
After saving a handful of lives as the World Trade Center collapsed on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, Hundred ran for mayor and won. Not a single cop or fire-fighter was elected to mayor. Only plushly-padded businessmen and super heroes. Being merely heroic just isn't enough, I guess. So the title of this graphic novel is therefore a play both on his name and his first one hundred days in office which is somehow deemed by the popular press to be significant.
As a result of his enhancement or however you like to refer to it, Hundred can communicate with machines. No one knows or explains how this is supposed to work, but by issuing spoken commands (in a weird green font, yet), he can tell a machine to turn on or off, he can make hidden listening devices generate white noise, and he can tell a gun to jam, and so on. This, together with his rocket pack is what makes him the world's first and only super hero. This 'rocket man' idea is pretty much purloined from the Rocketeer comic book of 1982, which itself stole heavily from older sci-fi movies such as 1954's King Of The Rocket Men.
The comic, which also has a slight tinge of steam punk to it, but is mostly rooted in fifties sci-fi, is rife with flashbacks, most of which are actually interesting until we reach volume three, but the most entertaining parts are the contemporary scenes where Hundred tries to get the work of government done while all the time having to deal with ghosts from his past and attempts on his life, as well as with a coterie of fascinating support characters (which includes some sassy women), all of whom seem to be as combative as they are supportive.
In volume one, his major problems are a person who seems to be dedicatedly assassinating snow-plow drivers, and a work of art (so-called) which consists of a large portrait of Abraham Lincoln with the word 'nigger' painted across it which is causing problems because it's being exhibited in a show in a publicly-funded museum - but mostly because people take art way-the-hell too seriously.
I recommend this comic for its wacky humor, and its interesting situations and and events. If TV sit-coms were this well done I'd actually watch them! One of the best parts about this for those interested in how comic books are put together, is the section in back which demonstrates just this in this case, using real people to pose for the scenes, and then translating those real life scenes into finished art-work, thereby getting positioning and perspective just right. I recommend this volume.
