Upon the release of the first series, IGN gave the series positive reviews. "Brian Vaughan uses "Ex Machina" to examine the water cooler topics of the moment, such as gay marriage, but also attempts to understand heroism in America's new era...What's most impressive about Vaughan's work is that his four monthly books are very different, not only thematically, but with cadence, pacing and dialogue." "Ex Machina" won the 2005 Eisner Award for Best New Series. In "Cultures of War in Graphic Novels", Tatiana Prororkova and Nimrod Tal suggest that protagonist Mitchell Hundred is a stand-in for the author's view on the Iraq War at the time. Analyzing Hundred's reaction to the Iraq War protests, "writer Brian Vaughan appeared to believe, as Hundred did, that the 'only people in the country opposing an Iraq invasion' were peaceniks [and that] opposition to the Iraq War, and the country's foreign policy, was foolish in the extreme."