Start with The first hundred days. That is the first Ex Machina trade, collecting issues one to five, and it is catalogued here under its collection title rather than as a numbered volume one because a bare numbered query returns an undifferentiated series record instead. From the second collection onward the numbering works normally.
The obvious alternative is to start with Y: The Last Man, the Brian K. Vaughan series most readers know. That is a different, longer book — Ex Machina is a self-contained fifty issues, written concurrently, with Tony Harris on art. Read it in trade order rather than dipping in, because the series runs two clocks at once: the mayoral term moving forward and the origin story filling in behind it. Both only pay off in sequence.
What the series actually is
Mitchell Hundred is a civil engineer who acquires the ability to talk to machines, spends an unsuccessful year as a costumed hero called the Great Machine, and is then elected Mayor of New York City after saving one of the towers on 11 September 2001. It is a superhero comic in which almost nobody punches anyone. The plots are gay marriage, a museum obscenity row, a transit strike, jury duty and an election year.
The trades in order
The first hundred days (issues 1 to 5), Ex Machina, Vol. 2 (Tag), Ex Machina Vol. 3 (Fact v. Fiction), Ex Machina, Vol. 4 (March to War), Ex Machina Vol. 5 (Smoke Smoke), Ex Machina Vol. 6 (Power Down), then volume seven, then Ex machina, vol. 8 (Dirty Tricks), Ex machina, vol. 9 (Ring Out the Old) and Ex machina, vol. 10 (Term Limits). The capitalisation of our records varies because they come from different printings; the numbering is what matters.
The gap, stated plainly
Nine of the ten trades are in this path. The seventh, Ex Cathedra, is not — it does not resolve in our catalogue, so it is named here in plain text rather than pretended away. It takes Hundred to the Vatican and escalates the origin mystery. Ex machina, vol. 8 works without it and is better with it, so buy it separately if you can find it.
Where the series turns
Ex Machina, Vol. 4 is the strongest single political arc: the February 2003 anti-war demonstrations, and a mayor who has to police a protest he privately agrees with. Ex Machina Vol. 6 is the hinge — a citywide blackout, and the point at which the source of Hundred's ability stops being a running question and becomes the subject. If you are deciding whether to commit, decide at the end of Ex Machina Vol. 3, where the flashback strand starts delivering real information rather than colour.
The ending
Ex machina, vol. 10 is divisive, and it is worth knowing that in advance rather than feeling cheated. It is deliberately unheroic, it is about compromise rather than victory, and it recontextualises the political arcs you have just read. Most readers who dislike it dislike it for what it says about Hundred rather than for how it is executed.
What is on the page
The September 11 attacks are the series premise and the second tower's destruction is depicted and returned to repeatedly. Across the run there is a shooting death, a racially charged killing, an assassination attempt, a suicide during the blackout, and a death among the principal cast.
Where to go next in Vaughan
Y The Last Man, Vol. 1 is the obvious follow-up and uses the same bare-volume trade convention; the full series runs sixty issues across ten collections. Pride of Baghdad, with Niko Henrichon, is a single self-contained graphic novel about four lions escaping Baghdad Zoo during the 2003 bombing — read it after Ex Machina, Vol. 4 for the same politics distilled into one sitting, and note that it contains a scene of sexual violence between animals. Paper girls, Vol. 1, with Cliff Chiang, is the later Vaughan: the same structural cleverness with none of the political realism. His long-running Saga is the other destination.
Follow the full ordered path here: Ex Machina Reading Order: Where to Start Brian K. Vaughan's Political Superhero Comic.
