Supergirl Vs. Miri?!?

OK, there are plenty of coincidences out there. There are a finite number of ideas, and it's only makes sense that sometimes different folks will come up with similar ideas at virtually the same time, at different places. Think Swamp Thing/Man-Thing, whose debuts were separated by two months, or Doom Patrol/X-Men, which came only three months apart.

But sometimes you come across coincidences that are so unlikely, so staggeringly impossible, that you wish you'd bought a lottery ticket that day.

We start with the classic Star Trek episode Miri. Here's a trailer:


Long story short, the Enterprise finds a planet 100% exactly identical to Earth (which is kind of silly, and completely gratuitous to the story, unless you really want to hammer on the "it could happen here" lesson). A few centuries ago, a plague (created by ill-advised biological experiments) killed off all the adults, so only kids survived.

Meanwhile, in Action Comics #344, Supergirl, while doing stuff in space, encounters...a planet exactly like Earth!!

Well, that can happen. But that's probably the only similarity, right?

Except Kara finds that teenagers are the authorities on this world!!

And not only that...

A plague wiped out the adults!!
On a world identical to Earth.
And now the youngsters are in charge!!

Now, clearly, these are not identical stories--there are substantial differences. But for these two tales with similar starting premises, to come out at close to the same time, boggles the mind.

Of course, someone at DC could have been acquainted with someone at Desilu (and vice versa, of course), and overheard something, and maybe subconsciously adopted parts of the others' idea. Or it could just be two different sets of creators tapping into the same bit of flotsam in the contemporary zeitgeist.

Say, which story came first? How close were they in appearing?

Miri first aired on NBC on October 27, 1966.

And according to the Library Of Congress, Action #344 was published on...October 27, 1966.


Mind. Blown.

I mean, what are the freakin' odds..?

BONUS FACT: The BBC banned the Miri episode for 2 decades after some viewers complained. Also banned: Plato's Stephcildrem, Whom Gods Destroy, and The Empath. Go figure. Sorry, British Trek fans of that era.

BONUS FACT II: In the Action Comics story, Linda Danvers was elected president of America on this "duplicate Earth":

This was 5 1/2 years before Prez. And nearly 8 years before they met:

You'd think Supergirl would have mentioned having been a teenage president herself to him...

Manic Monday--I Guess They'll Elect Anyone On Earth-One!

The best thing about comics is that, no matter how much you think you know, you keep finding things that you didn't know existed.

Things that you thought couldn't exist.

Things like this:

Yes, I know...we all thought Prez took place on some alternate Earth or such. Joe Simon explicitly said it imaginary or some such nonsense in Prez #1.

So imagine my surprise when I'm spelunking around GCD looking at Supergirl covers, and I find this...

Yes, that's really Supergirl, Linda Lee Danvers, with Prez Rickard, who is the President Of The United States.

So was Prez really the prez on Earth-One? Did Earth-Simon have their own  Supergirl? Or did Carey Bates just ignore the memo, and let his freak flag fly?

I don't have the issue in question, but you can read all about it here, as well as the second story in the issue, where a mad scientist makes a male clone of Supergirl, because comics. I guess I have something else to hunt the quarter bins for...

And remember,we all want George Perez to do a re-launch of Prez so we can get the credit "Prez by Perez."

Final Crisis-Preview--PREZ!!

Well, once again it's time to consider who should become part of mainstream DC continuity once they blow it up (again) and rebuild it (again). This time, I'm going with someone who never really was part of it, who was explicitly an imaginary story:



Yup, it's time for PREZ. Created in 1973 by Joe Simon and Jerry Grandenetti, it's...wait. Let me repeat that. We have a concept that was created by the creator of Captain Freakin' America just laying around, and DC is doing nothing at all with it. Nothing. That's wasteful folks. And the Final Crisis is just to place to rectify this gross negligence.



Yes, you read it right. Published in the heady days after the XXVI Amendment, which guaranteed the vote to 18-year-olds, Simon imagined that such a change would lead to future amendments lowering the age requirements for Congress and the President. The end result:


It's a fascinating reflection of the times. I've only read the first issue (only 4 were published before cancellation), but Joe Simon, who was approaching 60 when this was published, tackles corruption, Big Business, pollution, police brutality, commercialization, campaign finance reform, the oppression of Native Americans, pork barrel projects, biased history books...all in the first issue!!! Sure, it comes across as a little too forced hip and naive, but at age 60, Simon was pushing a pretty radical agenda.

PREZ wasn't 100% forgotten. Neil Gaiman did a Sandman story featuring him, and Ed Brubaker did a Vertigo one-shot about PREZ (man, I have GOT to find that).

But PREZ, it seems to me, would particularly resonate in 2007/2008, as a lot of Americans seem thirsty for alternatives to the same old politics. So why not make him mainstream continuity? Or perhaps DC is too afraid of rocking corporate boats these days to print anything so overtly political...

Hell, if they expect us to believe that Lex Luthor could be president, or Pete Ross (Question: what are the odds of 2, count them 2 people from Smallville, Kansas, becoming President??), then we can suspend disbelief enough to believe Prez Rickard. Make Mine the Flower Party, brother!!