I'm as glad to be through the election (and the donation request texts and commericals) as much as anybody, but it seemed a good excuse to look back at comic book intersection with elections. I'm talking fictional ones here, not comics on candidates or "get out the vote" PSAs.
Most of the these are going to relate to presidential elections, likely because there are more dramatic stakes. What better place to begin than Prez #1 (DC, 1973) which starts with a young man named Prez winning the highest office in the land and getting into adventures once he's in office. It was written by Joe Simon and drawn by Jerry Grandenetti and is predicated on the notion of a Constitutional amendment lowering the age for eligibility for office (which may have been inspired by the 1968 film Wild in the Streets). The upshot is a teenager gets elected, and who better than an earnest and idealistic kid from Middle America whose mother even named him “Prez” ‘cause she thought he’d be President one day?
Over at Marvel, Howard the Duck ran for president in 1976 on the All-Night Party ticket. Here's the Special Bullpen Note announcing it :
The storyline accompanying this fan club campaign was by Gerber and Colan. Ultimately, a scandal over a (fake) photo of Howard in the bathtub with his girl Beverly, tanked his candidacy.
These were just the first two comic book candidates. Steve Rogers would run in the alternate universe of What If? #26 (April 1981) by Barr and Trimpe/Esposito. Lex Luthor runs for president and wins beginning in a oneshot called Superman: Lex 2000 #1 (2001) by Loeb and Harris. Most recently, Loki ran in a 2016 4-issue miniseries Vote Loki written by Christopher Hastings.
In the realm of elections other than presidential, Suicide Squad (1987 series) had a nearly year-long arc written by Ostrander and Yale leading up to issue 22, published on election day 1988. In this story, Cray, a Senator up for re-election and his crony blackmail Reagan and Amanda Waller with revealing the existence of Task Force X, unless they use the Suicide Squad to take out his opponent!
Ultimately, Cray gets assassinated himself by Deadshot on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and the Suicide Squad's existence is made public. How's that for an election day surprise?
Do we have a sense of which "real world" / earth prime administration President Luthor replaces? I feel almost like it might've been Gore or GWB1 depending on how the chads hung but that would also raise the delicate question of whether they had 911 there or whether the superheroes managed to stop it.
ReplyDeleteAlong with this there's always the Secret Empire but the one that lives rent free in my head is the Thingmaker presidency in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen that then sets up the beatnik era.
I believe he won the 2000 election, yeah, so no "hanging chads" to count, I guess.
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