“We have a President-Elect who’s a Spider-Man fan! It’s like I’ve been saying for years, people who grew up reading comics are moving into positions of power in media, in business, and now in the Executive Branch of the federal government. Is that cool or what? I don’t know about you, but I’m very happy that the next President of the United States knows that ‘in this world, with great power there must also come — great responsibility!'”
– Comics scribe Roger Stern, from an interview with Zack Smith at Newsarama.
…
“I arrived in America [in August 1992] shortly before Bill Clinton was elected and I watched the joy that my friends had when he was elected, and then I watched six months later as that joy turned to grumbliness when they realized they elected a politician. I had a thought that I would write them the kind of president they obviously seemed to want, and I got to do it by grabbing an old, forgotten DC Comics character called Prez, the “first teen president of the United States,” and it was so much fun.”
-SANDMAN creator Neil Gaiman, from a retrospective interview at the L.A. Times’s Hero Complex blog. Love that word “grumbliness!” And the Silver Age Prez (created by Captain America co-creator Joe Simon) is a true riot:
Whether that chapter of SANDMAN will strike the same chords in 2009 remains to be seen, but earlier in the interview, Gaiman reminds us how much has changed in the world of comics since 1992:
“For example: Graphic novels these days, the collections of comics tends to harbor around eight issues. That was something that began really with “The Sandman” No. 1. When I explain to people that the reason that the first story, “Preludes and Nocturnes” was eight issues long was because back in those days DC Comics didn’t like canceling things before they gave them a year because it made them look bad. So they used to give things a year — which meant that I was pretty sure that I would be getting my phone call at issue eight letting me know, “No, we aren’t going to be doing this, the book is canceled.””
Posted by Aaron Humphrey
Forgive my ignorance, but isn’t there a minimun age limit of 35 to run for President of your country? How did they resolve it in that comic?
Fake ID.
//Oo/\
The age issue is dealt with in the Joe Simon story itself (I think the age limitation was ignored to get more young people to vote), but on the whole this is one of Simon’s 70’s DC satires, and is a great read, even if there were only four issues. The last features a chase through the white house by a legless vampire on wheels. I’m not sure what it was meant to mean, but I’m sure it was meant to symbolise something- and it was a brilliant comic with little of the irony rife in any attempt to revisit the character since.
Like most things, Prez was a product of his times, and probably best appreciated bearing that in mind.
Is it too late to vote for Howard the Duck for President? :)