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Popular Culture Review
politically throughout eternity. Before Smiley can take Prez to his new life,
Morpheus claims dominion because Prez has become a creature of story and
legend, which is the territory of dreams. Prez is allowed to wander the Americas
of alternative universes and bring peace, understanding, and leadership to each
of them (Gaiman 21).
Notice the expansion of the office of the President into a quasi-religious
form. Here it is understood that the current Presidents are not worthy of the
office and are merely extensions of Boss Smiley, the Devil-like ruler of the
world. In this comic book interpretation, the office of President has gained
stature while the men who hold it have lost credibility. No longer is the
President noble, respected, or even likable; instead, he is a pretender to the
throne that the nation must endure while waiting for a Christ-like savior to
appear. Two brief scenes within the story best illustrate this. The first is at the
beginning of the tale when a traveler offers his sympathies to an American who
hales from a reality that elected Carter and Reagan instead of the Messianic Prez
(Gaiman 2). Later in the issue Richard Nixon visits Prez and two discuss the role
of the President. While Nixon revels in the power and perks of the office, Prez
declares a desire to fix the nation and to help his fellow Americans (Gaiman 78). In the post-Watergate world many Americans no longer believed their
Presidents to be decent and trustworthy but still they longed for such leaders. It
was understood that Richard Nixon was the reality but Prez Rickard was the
nation’s fantasy.
A similar view of the Presidency can be seen in Prez’s other revival in
1995’s Vertigo Visions: Prez. In this story, a young man, PJ, who believes
himself to be Prez’s son, is looking for the former President who was longthought to be dead. PJ eventually meets Prez in a drug-induced vision in which
Prez tells the young man that he must work to save America. The story entitled
“Prez: Smells Like Teen President,” is more of a characterization of the grunge
youth of the mid 1990s than the flower children of the early 1970s. Most of the
characters in the story are apolitical and view the current President as
unimportant but long for a real leader like Prez to reappear. Much like the early
Christians, the denizens of this comic book America are awaiting the triumphant
second coming of their savior and are unworried about the pretenders that
attempt to claim his mantle as President. In this vision politics are unimportant
because they can only confuse and obscure the true duty of any American,
waiting and preparing for the next President/Savior. In this manner the
Presidency has become greater than the office-holder, the political system, the
legal structure, or any other corporal concern. Without its divine leader, the
office, and its accoutrements, are uselessly empty and serve as no consequence
to the true believer that awaits the triumphant return of the one true king
{VertigoVisions).
It is important to note that alterations to the character of Prez between
the 1970s and the 1990s can easily be seen as a reflection of political and social