Prez!

I am older than Evan, so I forgive him for not being familiar with "Prez: First Teen President," a very weird 1973-74 DC comic book series, written by Joe Simon, that was canceled after only four issues. I have at least three issues in my attic, I'm pretty sure.

Like so many other DC titles of the early 1970s, "Prez" was a cleaned-up, de-fanged ripoff of far-out, subversive themes and memes floating around the culture already. ("Kamandi," about post-apocalyptic, animals-in-charge America, is more subversive than "Prez," less subversive than what it ripped off: "Planet of the Apes.") In this case, the preexisting meme was: long-haired teens take over the US government. Ripped off from: the terrific 1968 boomersploitation flick "Wild in the Streets," directed by Barry Shear, based on the Robert Thom story "The Day It All Happened, Baby!" In the movie, Max Frost (Christopher Jones, shown above) is a pop star whose multiracial band/housemates/think tank (inc. Richard Pryor, shown above, as anthropologist/drummer Stanley X) conspire to lower the voting age; once that is accomplished, Frost is elected president, and he immediately starts putting everyone over the age of 30 -- including his mother, played by Shelley Winters, shown above -- into psychedelicized concentration camps.

In "Prez," by contrast, although Prez Rickard's election is made possible by a voting-age amendment, Prez is an incorruptible idealist who appoints his mother VP. (He seems more Gen Y than Boomer.) Prez, too, is surrounded by multiracial teen comrades. Most important is: FBI chief Eagle Free, a Native American youth who communicates with animals, lives in a cave, and is master of all the martial arts. Eagle Free is constantly thwarting the efforts of evil adults who'd depose or assassinate Prez.

I hope this clears up any lingering confusion!