First Teen President and Other Teen Power Fantasies

What if a middle school boy had the power of his wildest fantasies? Current events, the film Shazam!, and some 50 - year anniversaries have recently reminded me how my imagination between ages 11 and 13 was taken up with dreams of power -- mostly supernatural, sometimes political.


First Teen President Comic book creator Jack "King" Kirby, a hero of my early teens, imagined "the first teen president." Perhaps he was playing to the comic book nerds who could only imagine wielding power, or maybe it was his own fantasy of a fresh start for America. Prez premiered in a time of the Vietnam War, nuclear proliferation, riots, and minority group "liberation" movements, while President Nixon each day seemed more deeply enmeshed in the net of investigations spreading from the Watergate break in.

[Photo: The cover of Jack Kirby's short - lived comic series Prez from the Kirby museum. Read my blogpost on Kirby's art and life (06/05/2015).]

I don't remember anything about Prez, not even if there ever was a second issue in the series. But I do remember how I imagined tackling America's problems if I got the opportunity:

• America, only. "S---hole countries" was not a phrase that would have occurred to me in 8th grade, but it covers the basics of my foreign policy. I argued with my carpool that the starvation of millions on the other side of the globe had no effect on us, their failure to modernize was their own fault, and we should keep our own money for our selves.
  
• Forget diplomacy, just trust me. I felt like the whole Vietnam War thing could be solved if I could just talk sense to the leaders of both sides, make them see that war just hurts everybody, and offer rewards if they'd agree to end the fighting. That's just what the President's son - in - law did at a convention this spring for factions in the Arab - Israeli conflict, talking sense and offering investments; the President trusts his "very good, very close" relationships with dictators to change their behavior.
  
• Take back the country ...from bad guys and weirdos. For this member of Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority," the middle - class white families we watched on TV sitcoms defined "normal." Not normal, but scary or ridiculous, were hippies, Black Panthers, gays, socialistic college students, feminists, "Chicanos" and "Amerindians" demonstrating for respect. Nixon's 1968 campaign broadcast a montage of activists with this tag line: "Vote like your life depended on it." I felt that way at 10; I would have readily responded to the slogans "Take America Back" and "Make America Great Again."
  
• Strength. The tallest strongest boys in our 7th grade class, Cody and Mike, each had a loyal fan base. I was with Mike, the goofier and less intimidating of the two. In fact, I don't remember anyone else from the class except Robert, from team Cody, who remarked on my "broad shoulders." From Vice President Pence's endorsement of his running mate for his "strong, broad shoulders," to Trump's effusive praise of Putin, Kim, and others as "very strong," to his grip contest with France's president, I sense that he and his circle admire strength in itself, as I did.
  
• Hit harder. I'd hoped to learn magic spells in The Satanic Bible by Anton LeVey, Priest of the Church of Satan, back in 1971. All I took away from furtively skimming pages at the store, though, was LeVey's response to something Jesus said that I'd never heard, "if someone slaps you, turn the other cheek." LeVey's commandment made more sense to me in 7th grade, "Hit him back, harder." I would've cheered along with the crowd hearing Melania Trump's version, "My husband will hit back ten times as hard."
  
• Positive Magic. While my parents kept The Power of Positive Thinking on a bookshelf, Trump's parents had the author Norman Vincent Peale as a family friend. Back in 1971, I understood Peale's idea to be that anything you say with enough conviction will become true, as if by magic. Our President practices this religiously, but he also has staff and media commentators to help to make his positive statements true. For example, when he said that "millions" of illegal voters obscured his popular mandate in 2016, a commission formed to prove him right, disbanding only after the President's "alternative facts" couldn't be verified.
  
• Congress, Courts, Constitution: Why? In middle school, I didn't know what the Constitution was or how Congress related to the House of Representatives and the Senate. What I knew of the court system was just what I saw on Perry Mason. I would've identified with our President when he complained about old fashioned rules in Congress that slowed down his agenda.
  
• Secret Plan Honestly, in 7th grade I wanted to be a super - villain more than President, and my secret plans came from TV's Batman: you launch some attention - getting device (Joker's laughing gas, Penguin's magnetized umbrellas) and "in the confusion" get away with whatever you want. Our President demonstrated how it works a couple Mondays ago, when the President's attacks on Black members of Congress captured media attention while the administration issued a new asylum policy that came as a surprise to the agencies enforcing it.
  
• Be Very, Very Afraid! In my super - villain fantasies, the most fun part was issuing threats and imagining how everyone would cave. Our President is not afraid to go all out with threats of "fire and fury" to North Korea, "retaliation such as the world has never seen" to Iran, or a casual remark that he could "wipe" Afghanistan off the map if he doesn't get the response he wants.
  

I thought I had little in common with this President. Now I see: This is the President I always dreamed of when I was 13.

[Photo: Zachary Levi and Jack Dylan Grazer in Shazam! (2019) ]

Super Powers

What if a young teenage boy had super powers and a secret identity? That's the premise of DC's film Shazam!. Lonely orphan Billy Batson (Asher Angel) simply says the eponymous magic name -- anagram of Greek gods including Hercules and Zeus -- and he becomes tall, buff, fast, invulnerable, able to fly and shoot lightning from his fingers. 

I knew this hero in his trademark gold - braided white cape and bright red onesie. In the early 1970s, DC published reprints of him from the 1930s, and revived the character. For understandable reasons, DC now suppresses the fact that Billy Batson's alter - ego was named "Captain Marvel."

For all his power, Billy is still a fourteen - year - old. In this movie version, Billy resists the fostering of his foster family, instead continuing his search for the birth mother who lost her toddler Billy in a crowd. Played by adult actor Zachary Levi, the super - hero is easily distracted, too sure of what he thinks he knows, desperate to be liked and admired. Our super - hero uses his super - powers to perform stunts for social media, to charge cell phones, and to show off for crowds. When the real bad guy shows up with powers to match his own, Billy just wants to quit; his climb out of despair to help his newfound family gives emotional resonance to a movie that's otherwise, light, fun, and funny.