Prez: First Teen President was a four issue comic series by writer Joe Simon (the creator of Captain America) and artist Jerry Grandenetti, released by DC Comics in 1973 and 1974. It followed the adventures of Prez Rickard, the first teenage President of the United States of America, whose election had been made possible by a Constitutional amendment lowering the age of eligibility to accommodate the then-influential youth culture of the baby boom (a premise similar to that in the cult film Wild in the Streets).
Origin
Martha Rickard, of Steadfast, Middle America, named her son Prez because she thought he should someday be President. Having made the clocks of Steadfast, whose towers were so out of sync that the town heard a constant chiming, run on time, he was hired as a front for shady businessman Boss Smiley to run for United States Senator after the eligibility age was lowered. An idealist, he rebelled against Smiley. With 45% of voters under 30, the youthful Congress passed an amendment lowering the eligibility age for the presidency and Senator Rickard was voted President of the United States. He appointed his mother Martha Vice President and made his sister his secretary.
The most significant supporting character, however, was Eagle Free, a young Native American who has a deep understanding of animals. He lives in a cave well-stocked with books about them, but knows most of what he knows first hand. Prez appoints him director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Eagle Free wears a headband with feather, braids, and no shirt, and is often accompanied by a menagerie of native and non-native animals. Eagle Free trains Prez in multiple fighting techniques. This is never shown, but it is referred to when he utilizes them.
Original series
Prez fought legless vampires, a right-wing militia led by the great-great-great-great-great-grandnephew of George Washington, "Boss Smiley", a political boss with a smiley face, and evil chess players. He was attacked for his stance on gun control, and survived an assassination attempt during that controversy.
After four issues, the series was abruptly cancelled. Several years later, Issue #5 was included in Cancelled Comics Cavalcade #2, though Prez itself predated the DC Implosion.
Prez also appeared in issue #10 of the 1970s Supergirl series, cover dated October, 1974. Although the first issue Prez specified that the series was an imaginary (non-continuity) story, this story by Cary Bates implies that Prez Rickard is President of the United States on Earth-One of the DC Universe. In the story, Supergirl (Kara Zor-El), also known as Linda Lee Danvers, saves Prez from two hoaxed assassination attempts to be entrapped into a third by a politician working with a witch who is called Hepzibah, though she looks exactly like Eve, who stabs the head of a doll of Supergirl's likeness in attempt to make her drop him. Kara is able to resist and flies Prez to the Fortress of Solitude, then drops a plastic dummy dressed as Prez into the East River so that they will leave her alone. The story played up Prez's ability with clocks to the point that they seem a predominant interest in his life, and Kara believes he has the precision of a jeweler.
Later use
- In 1993, Neil Gaiman featured the character in issue #54 of his Sandman series, "The Golden Boy." In this issue, Prez was consistent with his previous characterization of the ideal president; a young man who adored not simply his country but everything that it stood for. Much of the story includes revised versions of real-life events from years that followed, and the assassination attempt on Prez's life takes the life of his fiancée, which Prez forgives, learning that the assassin is mentally unbalanced. Eventually, he is killed, and Boss Smiley confronts him with a day of reckoning. At this point, Sandman's protagonist, Dream, intervenes and offers him a place in The Dreaming.
- Prez was also the indirect subject of the 1995 "Vertigo Visions" one-shot Prez: Smells Like Teen President, by Ed Brubaker and Eric Shanower, in which a Generation X teenager seeks out the vanished former president, who, according to his mother, is his father. The cause of Prez's death is here reported to be a brain tumor aggravated by the dishonesty of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.
- There is also a reference to Prez in Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Lex Luthor creates a computer program which takes on human form and assumes the role of Commander in Chief. Its name is "Rick Rickard" and it bears a resemblance to a middle aged Prez.
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