There are those who will fault "Prez Vol. 1: Corndog-in-Chief" for clumsy plot mechanics.
In this collection of a six-issue DC Comics miniseries which writer Mark Russell originally intended as a 12-issue maxiseries (hence the cliffhanger ending), it takes teenager and viral video star Beth Ross the equivalent of two issues to be elected America's first teen president via Twitter. Russell ties the plight of Tina, a "war beast" robot who flees the army in despair over the people she's killed to work for Ross, into Ross' own tale abruptly at story's end (or abrupt halt, as the case may be). And Beth scores her initial political win over the corporate shadow government which really controls America in just one page.
So, one may ask, why am I awarding "Prez Vol. 1: Corndog-in-Chief" five stars?
I think Russell is much less interested in plot mechanics than he is in creating an America that will be coming if we're not careful. Russell employs the same method the creators of the classic TV series "Get Smart" used to satirize James Bond: "Do what they did except stretch it half an inch," co-creator Mel Brooks said.
Russell stretches our present day and creates a world where people shoot themselves on television "reality" shows in hopes of a better life. A world where vacuous news anchors more concerned with their appearance provide any crank who can string sentences together a platform, no matter how radical their beliefs may be. A world saddled with a "caring" healthcare system (in the person of recurring character "Carl, the End-of-Life Bear") that doesn't care at all. A world where corrupt corporate executives can copyright the world's DNA as a bargaining chip in order to create a life-saving vaccine for a "cat flu" that's ravaging the nation. (Beth, in turn, patents the executives' own DNA to gain the upper hand on them.) A world where President Ross is protected by a nuclear warhead phone app.
In brief, the world of "Prez" is a bleak, terrifying place I would hope no one wants to live in. It's intended as satire, but Russell's world hit too close to the here and now for me to do anything more than chuckle occasionally-and nervously.
Lightening the dystopian mood Russell creates is Ben Caldwell's artwork, which for me hits the sweet spot between illustration and cartooning that is best left to newspaper political cartoonists. And he draws a teenage girl who actually looks like a teenage girl (Supergirl, by contrast, is supposed to be a teenager but usually looks like a young adult woman) and avoids the trap of sexualizing her that too many of today's artists fall into. I'd be happy to see Caldwell drive the pencil on another DC title.
"Prez" might have worked better for DC as a Vertigo title, save for the company's push to keep Vertigo exclusively for creator-owned properties. (This "Prez" is a reboot of a short-lived early 70s series co-created by writer Joe Simon and artist Jerry Grandenetti.)
Whether or not "Prez Vol. 1: Corndog-in-Chief" works as satire is an exercise best left to individual readers. For me, it worked as a chilling cautionary fable of a road America ought not to take.
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![Prez (2015) Vol. 1: Corndog in Chief by [Mark Russell, Ben Caldwell, Sean Parsons, Mark Morales, Dominike "Domo" Stanton]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51Rmfta+-HL._SY346_.jpg)
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