Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Prez

November is Election Month, and in honor of it, may we present a special edition of G&F featuring

Yes, Prez! From the mind of Joe "You're Getting Paid To Draw, Jack, Not Erase"
Simon himself.

Yes, Joe Simon, the man who, in collaboration with Jack Kirby back in the 1940's, brought us Captain America.

Yes, Captain America, the comic book hero who paved the way for patriotic super-men of all shapes and sizes - including red turtlenecked teens. Believe it or not.

Joe put together the ballad of Prez with art assist from Jerry Grandenetti, an appropriately unpolished artist for what was certainly a hastily-constructed concept (later adopted and made into a triumphantly allegorical tale by Sandman author Neil Gaiman). The story of "The Man From Steadfast" goes like this:

Gimme a P!

Prez Rickard is a youngster in the way-side town of Steadfast, a small community in the boondocks where Prez heads the local drag-racing club in his 'sweet ride,' The Lollipop, while he ponders political futures and frets about local timepieces.

You see, Steadfast is famous for its clocks - thousands of them, everywhere, in every nook and cranny, each one unique - especially in regards to their accuracy. According to the text in the first issue, it takes more than half-an-hour for all the clocks to finish chiming the top of the hour.

Now two unrelated locomotives move towards each other on the inexorable tracks of destiny. While Prez is taking it upon himself to fix all the clocks in Steadfast so that they chime right, Congress has passed laws giving 18-year olds the vote, and allowing 21-year olds to hold all public offices.


You blockhead.

Enter Boss Smiley, Charlie Brown lookalike gone bad. A greed-monger of the first degree, political thug, polluter, breaker of men's souls and, oh, TOTALLY MISSHAPEN FREAK! Smiley has designs on high political power, and sees the naive Prez Rickard as his tool. He co-opts Prez (who is riding high on a wave of publicity following his town-wide clock repair job) as his own personal pocket candidate for Senator of ... whatever the heck state Steadfast is supposed to be in.

The clueless young Prez does as he is told, his eyes filled with senatorial stars, until he gets wised up and hepped to the deal by go-go Native American Eagle Free. Turning his back on Smiley, Prez nails his former benefactor to the wall and - riding the newly appointed teen vote and the publicity high of ruining the infamous Smiley - finds himself whisked into the White House! While there, Prez becomes an ambassador for peace, love, understanding, and fighting vampires.

No, seriously....

Gimme a R!

I personally LIKE the premise of Prez, and apparently I ain't the only one; award-winning author Neil Gaiman recruited guest artist Mike (Madman) Allred to do a Prez retrospective in Gaiman's critically acclaimed DC/Vertigo book The Sandman (issue #54, The Golden Boy). Sadly, outside of Gaiman's work (and possibly the Ed Brubaker one-shot "sequel" to Gaiman's story) the premise was subsequently underfed.

Given that it was 1972, Prez (then 21) was a child of the Sixties, of the love and peace generation. Appropriately, he became an ambassador of said virtues, much to the chagrin of the establishment which saw him as an upstart, unworthy of the office granted him, and a danger to their precious status quo. And yet, Prez was often foolish, naive, downright childish and simple, and carried with him a bag of spite and paranoia for the older politicians who surrounded him.

So what had we here? A unique everyman champion of a generation that broke all the rules, an indictment of a bloated political system, or a cruel parody of an earnest but often errant youth movement? All in all, it was a very different type of patriotic super-hero than Simon - or anyone else - had given us before.


Gimme an E!

Well, anyway, it's all irrelevant, as the series couldn't have been more brutally cheapened and used than if Boss Smiley himself was writing it. (Some notes on Boss Smiley, by the way: The Prez stories were written much in the same vein as Simon and Kirby's Fighting American - highly tongue-in-cheek, often misshapen villains representing vast political and social movements across the land. Well, sorta ... cause while Boss Smiley may have been the symbol of the shallow, ugly America of the early Seventies, I don't know what Dracula and Bobby Fisher represented).

Yes, while Prez jetted around the world bringing relief to put upon nations, he also had to fend off the violent advances of the NATION OF TRANSYLVANIA which threatened to send a HORDE OF RABIES-INFECTED VAMPIRE BATS down upon our heads! Yes, and then there was the insane, costumed CHESS-PLAYERS from the Soviet Union who used robot chess-pieces to commit terrible crimes!

Prez was assisted in his ludicrous adventures by the aforementioned Eagle Free, now Director of the FBI, and by his gargantuan vice-president Martha (no last name given).

Messing with continuity buffs for years to come, Prez even makes an appearance in Supergirl Comics in which he not only co-starred with the Maid of Might, but was also identified as the current President in DC Continuity. Natch'ly, the story is largely ignored in terms of Pre-Crisis canon.


Gimme a Z!

Let's see, what else stands out during Prez's brief period in office? There was the renaming of Air Force One to "The FreeBee." There's an assassination attempt on Prez's life which instead claims that of a lookalike's ... and no one seems to care. Sigh. Prez ran a grand total of four issues, plus a fifth which was completed but never published outside of DC's in-house Cancelled Comics Cavalcade (printed and distributed solely to creators and price guide guru Robert Overstreet, merely for purposes of copyright retention). Add to this is the apocryphal Supergirl appearance, the two Vertigo books, and his brief stint as a reserve member of the Champions.

No, I made that last part up. Prez never even rated a "Whatever Happened To ..." feature in the back of DC Comics Presents.

On one final note, let's take a moment to REALLY consider the full implications of Prez Rickard's term of office; If puffy, hound-faced, pudgy Bill Clinton seems to be swimming in a pool of endless poon, imagine the quantity and quality of nubile young girl intern-meat a blonde, Midwestern twenty-something woulda had on stock. Viva Prez! Viva the U! S! A!



Stupid Kite-Eating Tree!

• Prez plays well with others
• Prez sticks it to Boss Smiley
• They're Here! The Deadly Chessmen!
• Eagle Free has eliminated the glass ceiling. And everything else, too.
• As far as origins go, it's not exactly "Rocketed from a doomed planet..."
• Prez could stand to learn some respect for native cultures
• If Prez keeps it up, he's gonna get a swat to the face.
• Damn that electrical energy!
• Prez and Hillary are burning the Whitewa---I mean, he and Eagle Free are looking for incriminating evidence of Smiley's misdeeds.
• A big damn Prez seal, for whatever misdeeds you care to apply it.

"Then there was Prez, a husky, handsome blond like a freckled boxer, meticulously
wrapped inside his sharkskin plaid suit with the long drape and the collar
falling back and the tie undone for exact sharpness and casualness, sweating
and hitching up his horn and writhing into it, and a tone just like Lester
Young himself. "You see, man, Prez has the technical anxieties of a money-making
musician, he's the only one who's well dressed, see him grow worried when
he blows a clinker, but the leader, that cool cat, tells him not to worry
and just blow and blow--the mere sound and serious exuberance of the music
is all he cares about. He's an artist. He's teaching young Prez the boxer.
Now the others dig!!"

-Jack Kerouac, On The Road