If you like: A Modest Proposal, DC's Young Animal imprint, The Murderbot Diaries.
When I re-read Prez so I could write about it, I came out with mixed feelings.
Something has changed since 2015: I have no patience with satire.
I’m not in the mood to read exaggerations about what’s gone wrong right now -- I work in the news business, after all. Some days it feels like we’re living in a satire.
So a future in which election is held by Twitter, people can’t afford health care and the electoral vote is so broken that each state gets one vote each is not helping. There’s too much of a whiff of nihilism. And I’m not sure the people to help fix a broken system are anonymous people with keyboards and the richest man on earth.
But I’m still recommending it for three reasons.
One is the main character, Beth Ross. She’s a decent human being and I like a portrayal of a teen who isn’t a sitcom cliche.
When Beth is caught on video accidentally frying her braid at work, her viral stardom earns her a place as a joke candidate on the ballot. But the greed in Congress has everyone using her for a game of chicken, only for the fake-out to become real and Beth becomes President.
There’s a very good moment where Beth is first elected to office and one of the drones that are owned by the military kills a boy who was running after a soccer ball.
Beth is really upset. One of her advisors asks her why it’s bothering her, she knows these things happen. And Beth’s realization is that it’s now her responsibility. She sets out to make the world a little better, even if it doesn’t always work out.
I’d say the biggest problem of Prez is too much time is spent on the problems and not enough on Beth. That might have changed in volume two, but the series was canceled before then (although Beth lasted longer than DC’s original teen president, Prez Rickards).
Reason number two I recommend this comic book is Tina. Tina starts out as a killer robot who is supposed to make the droid operators -- gamers in bean bags -- obsolete. Unfortunately for the military industrial complex, the robot is so advanced it develops a conscience and runs away. Donning a wig and identifying as “Tina,” the robot is taken in by a church.
Again, maybe it’s the relentless satire, but it was refreshing to see something not exaggerated to its most vile end, whether it’s Tina adopting Christianity or her LGBTQ (with an added R for robot) support meetings.
The third reason is the art. Ben Caldwell does a great job with creating a world that is exaggerated but just this side of believable. Like the pop-up ads at the discount hospital where Beth’s dad is sick -- just imagine those pop-up ads that show in apps appearing in front of you in real life.
"Prez" by Mark Russell and Ben Caldwell; DC Comics; volume one collection published in 2016.
I bought one or two issues of the original Prez in late 1973 or early 1974 at Alexander's Pharmacy, which used to exist on Capital Avenue near Territorial Road. It was a very strange comic by Joe Simon, one of the co-creators of Captain America. I had just started high school, I think. Nixon was still president then, but just barely. Which puts me in mind of a classy French saying for your blog: "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."