Subscribe to Mstars News!
Sign up for our weekly news updates by entering your email:
DC Entertainment is bringing readers their first teenaged president in Prez Vol. 1: Corndog in Chief. In an exclusive interview with MStars News, writer Mark Russell and artist Ben Caldwell talk about the political satire behind their first six issues and their DC Comics heroine Beth Ross in the White House.
Prez follows Beth Ross, who is plucked out of obscurity and all of a sudden becomes the first teenaged President of the United States. This is an all-too-real possible future, this is a nation where even corporations can run for office. While the poor are being used as human billboards, food is being delivered by drones, America's only hope is this nineteen-year-old Twitter sensation. But the real question isn't whether Beth Ross is actually ready for politics, it's whether politics is ready for her.
Before arriving in bookstores everywhere on February 9, the God Is Disappointed In You scribe and the Justice League Beyond illustrator discuss their female protagonist, creating the political world of the future, and the satirical message behind the narrative.
MStars News: Tell me how Prez come about.
Mark Russell : Strangely, I had never even heard of Prez until DC comics gave me a call and asked me if it was something I might be interested in writing. When they told me the premise about a teenager who becomes President of the United States, I felt it was impossible to turn it down.
MS: Tell me about having the story take place from Beth Ross' point-of-view, through a female perspective.
MR: The basic concept for Prez is someone comes completely out-of-left field, is very marginalized, and not taking seriously at all. I wanted someone to be taken not seriously as possible and become president. In America, in our day and time, by nature that has to be a woman. Someone who is going to be underestimated and not taken as seriously as they should be. But then, surprises everybody by being a competent able leader. For me, I was trying to make a statement by saying that you have to be careful when you underestimate people. If you underestimate somebody, you're the one who's going to end up looking like an idiot in the long run. And I wanted Beth to be someone who was as underrated as possible.
Ben Caldwell: It's funny because the character at the same time represents a group that traditionally has been marginalized, especially when it comes to power politics. At the same time, in creating Beth, we wanted to create an everyman character. And it's the 21st century, so the everyman character happens to be in the everywoman character. She also represents the face of a future of what anyone wants or doesn't want, fights for or doesn't fight for; it's here. Also one of the reasons why we try to avoid making her look too specifically Caucasian or any one ethnicity, because again, when you boil America down, not only demographically will it be very different in 20 years than it was in the past. But on the other hand, it just reemphasizes the idea that America wasn't made up of this or that, it's an idea. And anyone can be that idea. We had a lot of fun designing a character who could live up to that.
MS: This political world that you created alludes to Fox News and The Daily Show. Tell me what references did you two look up for this project?
MR: I didn't look up a whole lot. I just kind of drew upon these things that had been accruing in my subconscious or that had been bothering me for years. And it was basically like opening a can of shook-up beer.
BC: At this point sadly, we don't even have to do any active research because living in modern America ,we are constantly absorbing tons of this material everyday, even if we want to or not. For example, one of the things that I added was when various people, talking about the senators in the first few installments of the story, are arguing one idea or another, I added that insta-poll where it would show their comments making them more or less popular in real time. And that's something that doesn't exist now, but if you do your research and stop for two seconds to think you'd realize, "Yeah that's going to happen in the next few years."
MS: Tell me about translating humor into your artwork.
BC: A lot of the things that Mark came up with outside of his proportionally large number of devastating puns were a lot of these ideas. They can't even be called on the nose because he managed to write these things down like five seconds before they happened in real life. Anyone that taps into their subconscious will feel these things already happening and his gift is putting them into worlds and actions just moments before they became a concrete thing.
MS: Because we are now under a new presidential campaign, with so many debates going on as we speak, do you think audiences will relate to the political satire of Prez?
MR: I think so. I think that there's a lot. People will relate to the things that Beth says. The things that I think are highly distilled versions of what a lot of people are thinking that they are maybe afraid to say it out loud. That and I think that there's also in terms of the issue with technology, possibly some things that they haven't considered. I'd like to think that there is this dual thing where people are able to relate to something that they think as well as Bet. But they will be exposed to things they haven't really thought of. So she's acting like a bridge between the dissatisfaction of our current world and the dangers of the next.
BC: We happen to live in a time and place where the consequences of politics for example, or I should say rather, the realization of most people that we live in a political world that decisions are made usually by other people in other places that those decisions affect us on a daily level. For instance, Flint's water problems right now, these are things that because of the increased exposure of media and online media make it harder to escape for most people, hard to escape how directly these things impact us. Prez really speaks to that glowing realization that inescapability of the world. And hopefully, an attitude people can't take towards those changes and not make them destructive.
MS: How do you think Beth Ross would react to someone like Donald Trump?
MR: I think by the time Beth comes around in 2036, Donald Trump will be the norm, controlling public conversation with outrage. I think that's the norm in 2036, I don't think she's be surprised. It's sort of the waters she swims in.
BC: On the other hand, she's sort of an anecdote to the Trumps of that day. I mean, you can see him as the most obvious example of something that's going on more wildly. You have someone who says pretty much whatever he wants, without any concern, if it's something he's actually done in the past or actually would do later on. His work and his actions are completely divorced from each other. A lot of the supporters realize that.
She doesn't really worry about this. She's worried about what people are actually trying to do and what she can do. So yeah, I don't think she'd have a lot of time for him. Most of the characters in the story that are most like him, she can't really avoid them, but she isn't too enamored of them.
Highly recommended, Prez Vol. 1: Corndog in Chief arrives in stores February 9.
© 2024 Mstars News, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
