Prez #4 Review

Written by Mark Russell
Art by Dominike "Domo" Stanton
Cover price $2.99
Realease date September 16th 2015

Topical

*SPOILERS below, summary and score at the bottom*

Prez #4 is used for Beth Ross to reevaluate the nations defense protocols.
The issue opens with the nations solution to immigration, which is kill anyone who tries to come into the country illegally. The whole issue revolves around the sentries and how Beth reacts to their actions. We see a sentry kill an innocent boy playing soccer, the operators controlling the sentries are becoming careless with their power. We see Beth question the morality of the sentries and the blame she is now receiving for their behavior since now she is the president. Beth then decides to get rid of the sentry program completely while senator Thorn wants to enhance the program.





A new AI sentry was introduced named "War Beast" and Senator Thorn is in love. The new model is suppose to be thinner and sleaker and it does look pretty cool. It is this worlds Terminator. We see the War Beast kill several Muslims(Which emphasizes the islamophobia the nation is experiencing) who are "Set free" from jail. The War Beast's AI is starting to evolve because he is starting to watch romantic comedies. War Beast eventually escapes his lab and appeares to have learned emotions such as empathy, but that's just what i thought.

There's a small subplot involving trillionaire Fred Wayne who created an algorithm that can create every possible written work ever. We see this guy do whatever he wants because he has money, I am assuming this is some sort of analogue to Bruce Wayne. Then we see a movie for a character named Night Justice who is definitely a parody of Batman because he is holding a check for a billion dollars and says "This will buy many weapons" I understand the need to discriminate the one percent, but i did not see how it furthered the story.

This issue was okay, I enjoyed the ending with the discussion of having sentries and the War Beast. There was a nice scene where we saw Beth talked to her old Lil' doggie manager. Another great scene was seeing Beth upset about the kid who got killed and these scenes really show how Beth is still normal and is still a human instead of the rest of callous politicians depicted in this comic. Other than that I did not see much development in the story.

The guest artist was great, it matched the style of Ben Caldwell, but there was definitely an absence of detail. There was not as much background detail that Caldwell does and that really makes this world come to life. I enjoyed the art and the colors did not feel different.

Bits and Pieces

This issue of Prez is filled with current topical issues such as authority brutality and islamophobia, which is crazy how accurate it is since these issues are written way prior. While this issue was not near as entertaining as the others, some of the topics were good. The subplot was dull as well. The art was great, but attention to detail was missing. The story did not feel as developed especially when they are trying to introduce a new character such as War Beast.

7/10