Vladimir Putin attacks an American superhero in Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris’ ‘Ex Machina’
The recent assassination attempts against Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as part of Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine is the latest assassination effort seemingly supported by Russian president Vladimir Putin. Putin has a long-standing reputation for utilizing assassination as a tactic against his enemies, which may have inspired his use as a villain in the political superhero comic book series Ex Machina.
Created by writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Tony Harris, and published by DC Comics, Ex Machina features Mitchell Hundred, the mayor of New York City and a former superhero. Hundred’s discovery of a strange artifact leaves his face scarred with embedded alien circuitry and gives Hundred the power to communicate with and command machines; with help from his friends Ivan “Kremlin” Tereshkov and Rick Bradbury, Hundred becomes the world’s first and only superhero, The Great Machine, before deciding to run for mayor.
Debuting in 2004 and set during Hundred’s mayoral term in the years 2002 through 2005, Ex Machina is a heady mix of political drama and superhero action. The comic depicts flashbacks to Hundred’s superhero career amid Hundred’s current challenges (both political and superhuman), along with thought-provoking debates about societal issues like abortion, government funding for the arts, gay rights, and decriminalization of marijuana.
The comic’s realism includes references to world events and leaders, like the Iraq War, George W. Bush, and Pope John Paul II; in issue 30, the latter invites Hundred to a private audience at the Vatican. Accompanied by Bradbury, Hundred travels to Italy, unaware that the Russians are planning to attack him and the Pope.
A Russian agent named Oleg has acquired experimental technology that will allow him to hack Hundred’s circuitry remotely, in order to take over Hundred’s body and force him to kill the Pope. Oleg explains the plan’s rationale to a prostitute he hires: “You see, assassination attempts often fail, and when they do, they only make one’s enemy more powerful. But my boss realized that if we could make our real enemy become an assassin, he would instantly be rendered powerless, whether or not he succeeded.”
Oleg is able to turn Hundred against the Pope, but the Russian plot fails to consider the spiritual charisma of John Paul II; the ailing pontiff bravely counsels Hundred, helping him resist and overcome the attack. It is an intense exchange that leads to an important revelation that will impact future issues; rendered deftly by the creative team in issue 33, the moment is a respectful depiction of John Paul II, who had passed away about two years before the comic’s publication.
Meanwhile, Bradbury finds and confronts Oleg, who reveals that his orders come from the Kremlin, and mentions Putin by name. Shortly after Oleg bites into a suicide capsule, he mocks Bradbury: “But best of luck proving so.”
Ex Machina’s use of Putin as an adversary in an assassination plot is apt. A former intelligence officer who attained the presidency in 1999, Putin is suspected of murdering his enemies over the years, although these suspicions are challenging to prove. While there is an evident pattern of Putin’s enemies being killed, proving a connection to Putin is difficult.
Even in instances where evidence strongly links the Kremlin to an assassination — such as the 2006 poisoning of defected Russian intelligence agent Alexander Litvinenko via the use of radioactive polonium in his tea, which led to an official inquiry by the British government that found Putin had likely ordered the assassination — there is always a space for uncertainty.
The sophisticated use of nerve agents, poisons, and toxins, as well as criminals and mercenaries (like those involved in the Zelensky assassination attempts), gives Putin deniability. Also, Western governments hoping to avoid confrontation with Putin have been hesitant to assign resources for the investigation of suspected Kremlin-backed assassinations.
In her book From Russia With Blood: The Kremlin’s Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin’s Secret War on the West, reporter Heidi Blake outlines Putin’s history of using assassinations to eliminate his enemies:
“The truth was that Putin had been using deadly force to wipe out his enemies from the first days of his presidency, and the West had long been looking away. Dissenting politicians, journalists, campaigners, defectors, investigators, and critics had been gunned down, poisoned, hit by cars, thrown out of windows, beaten to death, and blown up on Russian soil since his ascent to the Kremlin on the last day of 1999.”
Blake notes that Western governments, eager to have access to Russia’s energy and financial resources, ignored Putin’s actions:
“Turning a blind eye to this brutality was the cost of doing business with an economically renascent nuclear power that had a stranglehold on Europe’s energy supply and a superwealthy class of oligarchs pouring billions into Western economies. Successive leaders had let themselves be lulled into the belief that Putin was a man they could do business with — a man who, with the right coaxing, might finally come in from the cold and integrate the world’s largest country into the warmth of the rules-based liberal world order. That had proved a catastrophic misjudgment.
…
While the West welcomed him to the fold, the Russian president was busy reviving the KGB’s targeted killing program. He plowed public money into researching and developing chemical and biological weapons, psychotropic drugs, obscure carcinogens, and other undetectable poisons, and he armed specialist hit squads to hunt down his foes at home and abroad.”
When Vaughan was writing Ex Machina, the poisoning of Litvinenko, as well as the 2006 murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, was well-publicized in the press, and may have inspired Vaughan’s use of Putin as an antagonist in the comic. Regardless, Putin’s actions make him a real-world supervillain, and his defeat in the pages of a comic book inspires the hope that real-life heroes may also prevail against him.
NOTES AND FURTHER READING:
DISCLOSURE: The author is a former DC Comics contributor. There are no current financial arrangements between the author and DC Comics.
Ex Machina Book Four (this collection includes the “Ex Cathedra” story arc in issues 30 through 33, originally published from November 2007 through February 2008, referenced in the above article; written by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Tony Harris, inks by Jim Clark, colors by JD Mettler, letters by Jared K. Fletcher, DC Comics, 2014)
From Russia With Blood: The Kremlin’s Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin’s Secret War on the West (Heidi Blake, Mulholland Books, 2019)
The Litvinenko Inquiry: Report into the death of Alexander Litvinenko (Chairman: Sir Robert Owen, UK House of Commons, January 21, 2016)
“Volodymyr Zelensky survives three assassination attempts in days” (Manveen Rana, The Times, March 3, 2022)
“Putin’s love of poison — a messy weapon for assassins — reflects his need for proven uncertainty” (Mitch Prothero, www.businessinsider.com, August 20, 2020)
Attention, Secret Dictionary Club members — use Code Five to decipher the following message: OCZ DOZH CVN VMMDQZY VO OCZ AVXDGDOT.
POST-CREDITS SCENE:
THE BLACK TERROR WILL RETURN…
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