Citizen Jack #1 Reviews 

Presidential Dreams And Faustian Pacts In “Citizen Jack” #1 [Review]

By | November 6th, 2015
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

Watch out, America! Jack Northworthy is going to be your next president! At least if this deal with the demon in the back of his head works out. Learn more about Worthington’s demonic campaign in our review of this first issue from Sam Humphries and Tommy Patterson.

Written by Sam Humphries
Illustrated by Tommy Patterson

Every presidential candidate has a skeleton in their closet—Jack Northworthy worships the devil! A scandal-plagued small town politician, Jack should in no way be president. But he’s got a secret weapon: Marlinspike, a malevolent demon of high ambitions. Together, they’re running for president in an outrageous campaign that America will never forget! Blockbuster writer SAM HUMPHRIES (Guardians of the Galaxy, X-Men: Black Vortex) and New York Times bestselling artist TOMMY PATTERSON (Game of Thrones) debut a brand new ONGOING SERIES with a DIABOLICAL EXTRA-SIZED FIRST ISSUE!

Jack Northworthy really wants to be president. It’s an unlikely dream considering he’s the only mayor to ever be impeached in the state of Minnesota and his wardrobe consists solely of a bathrobe and an American flag. But at least he has the demon he worships in the back of his head, promising to take Jack all the way to the White House.

“Citizen Jack” is Sam Humphries and Tommy Patterson’s portrait of a man who wants to be in charge of America and shouldn’t but will anyway. They say so in the first caption, “Jack Northworthy wasn’t always America’s problem.” In a political climate where one of the top conservative candidates are a guy who was on the poster for Wrestlemania 23, it’s easy to make a comic about the presidential process that includes a lot of over the top caricatures. And while “Citizen Jack” is on its way towards becoming too ridiculous for its own good, if it continues to try and dig deeper into its main character, there’s potential for this series to really take off.

With all its talk of presidential campaigns gone awry, “Citizen Jack” shares a few similiarities with “Prez”, DC’s latest mini-series about a teen president that is also worth reading. Both involve a culture that’s grown sick enough where anyone, no matter how ill qualified they are, could stumble into the White House, albeit through completely different ways. “Prez”, for all its criticism with pop culture, still maintains an air of idealism in its protagonist and the idea that young people might change the government for the better. “Citizen Jack”, meanwhile, tends to be far more cynical, depicting a mean washed up alcoholic.

What I’m most worried about for “Citizen Jack” is the possibility that Humphries and Patterson might fall into that Garth Ennis Effect where you stop writing characters and start doing one-dimensional caricatures. Jack’s such an easy character to hate from the outset, that any extra imagery like him constantly drinking out of a bottle of whiskey and wearing an American flag just kind of feels like overkill. Thankfully, Jack does get space to breathe and become an actual character. When his campaign viral video backfires horrendously, Jack seeks refuge in his shack, cradling a trophy he won when he used to be a hockey player in high school. He doesn’t want to be a laughingstock, he just wants to be important again. It’s not the subtlest character work ever, but if that pathos can be maintained along his campaign trail, then his journey should be pretty interesting.

Speaking of that demon thing, “Citizen Jack” doesn’t go into great detail regarding Malinspike, the shadow creature that insists it can make Jack president. What little it does give away, however, is pretty impressive. When Jack takes a polar plunge as part of his campaign announcement, Marlinspike’s corpse(?) is shown underwater in a really gorgeous page from Tommy Patterson, with some incredibly solid colors from Jon Alderink. That moment is such a huge departure from the rest of the series, that it’s going to be a treat to see Malinspike’s demonic world clash with the mundanity of rural Minnesota, which has a suitably grounded feel. Unfortunately, that groundedness is lost in some of Jack’s more ridiculous characteristics (his American flag cape) and its completely thrown out the window by the time CNN has a dolphin working as one of its pundits.

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Now, I don’t think “Citizen Jack” shouldn’t go over the top. In fact, the moments with Malinspike are some of the more compelling moments in the comic. But there’s no real explanation as to why this one side character has to be a dolphin and it is just so distracting. The pundit (Cricket) is a funny character too, but his existence raises so many questions that have nothing to do with our drunk Faustian hero. Either fill your comics world with surreal anthropological characters or focus on the demon living in the snowblower salesman’s garage. Otherwise someone on the internet’s going to spend a whole paragraph complaining about it.

Aside from superficial grievances like that, “Citizen Jack” is a very debut. Jack looks set to be a worthy character to carry the book, so long as he doesn’t turn into an utter caricature. And though “Citizen Jack” doesn’t seem like it has anything particularly profound to say about politics just yet, the potential is there for a good character portrait of one man, his dreams, and his demon.

Final Verdict: 6.8 – I’ll recommend this one as something you might want to trade wait. This first issue focused a little too much on making itself look like an over the top satire, but there’s a strong possibility that it will really find its footing couple months from now.


James Johnston

James Johnston is a grizzled post-millenial. Follow him on Twitter to challenge him to a fight.

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