I’d like to talk today about my Night Below session from last week, where a character in the party ultimately betrayed their trust and turned on them when that characters evil ex-boyfriend showed up with his gang of slavers. But it is just too deep and exciting to have time to post that on a Monday morn, so I’ll have that later in the week. For now, let’s enjoy some comedy filler (or an attempt at comedy anyway) to cheer up our hectic Monday (where it is raining here in Southern California after two week of brutal, record setting heat).
You young punks! You don’t know how good ya got things nowadays! Why, when I was a lad, we had a teenage president! You think Dubbya Bush screwed up this country? You shouda seen what President Prez was up to. Talkin’ to animals instead of balancing the budget. Fightin’ legless vampires instead o’ making peace in the Middle East. Yeah, Prez was what set up on this path of doom.
I’ll get to the Prez comic in a second, but let me admit right off the bat that at one point in my futuristic Champions game world New Haven (based on the setting in Superhero 2044). In the early 80’s, I briefly toyed with the idea of a teenage president getting elected and the ramifications of that (luckily it never happened, keeping me from having to retcon an entire period of time in my game world when I got older and smarter). Of course I was inspired by Prez, one of DC Comics greatest Morts (Mort = in retrospect embarrassing and poorly conceived comic book character) of the early 70’s.
Although admittedly set in an America that was alternate to the ongoing DC comics continuity (even though Prez appeared in an issue of Supergirl at some point), it still seemed like an idea out of the worst fever dreams of a hacky comic book writer. But no hacks worked on this; no less than Jack Kirby collaborator and co-creator of Captain America Joe Simon created this ode to an idiotic decade.
Through some sketchy political wrangling, the age of American President Candidates is lowered to 18 years old. Why not? We knew everything there was to know at 18, right? “Prez Rickard,” called Prez in infancy by his mom who obviously wanted him to be president one day, bust onto the political scene (in his origin story he got all the clocks in his town of “Steadfast” to run on time, making him a hometown hero) and took those unhip, fuddy duddy Washington fat cats by storm, winning the election hands down. Groovy, baby! Do it for the kicks!
A firm believer in nepotism, Prez put both his mommy and his hot teen queen sister in high profile White House positions. Also into this already weird mix came Eagle Free, a sort of a native American Doctor Doolittle. No suit and tie for Eagle Free, please. Even after the sweater and jeans teen president makes Eagle the head of the CIA (!??), ol’ Eagle still runs around with feathers and leathers and no shirt. Even in the white house at press debriefings. No damn shirt.
Eagle Free teaches Prez the ins and outs of animal fighting abilities (which, I shit you not, Eagle Free apparently learned himself from a library of animal books in his humble cave home). So now Prez can fight like…a…bear. And…a…horse. Or…an…elephant. Or…ok, look, for the most part a human who fights like a bear or an elephant is going to be fairly piss poor in your average bar fight and get his ass brutally kicked. His teeth are gonna be flying like popcorn. So for the sake of sanity, let’s just say Prez somehow is bestowed supernatural animal powers by Eagle (although it is clear in the comic Prez is “taught” these techniques as one would learn karate) and call it a beautiful day.
Prez only managed 4 issues. The most interesting storyline featured our Presidential hero battling handicapped, legless vampires. No shit. Let me just say that the truncated undead were about as scary and deadly as you would expect. Which is not at all.
Many yeas later Neil Gaiman would give Prez and appearance in an issue of the acclaimed Sandman series, but otherwise DC has not often thrown him a bone. He didn’t even show up in that multiple realities warping 80’s series Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Although my own “Prez” didn’t happen (thankfully) in my Champions game world, we at least have the original and the best to look back on fondly. Kidding aside, it is a fun idea from a kooky 70’s perspective. But c’mon, legless vampires?
