Patrick Stewart: Beloved By The Geeks

We love this man.

Most geeks first experienced seeing Patrick Stewart in the role of the very un-Kirkish Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek:  The Next Generation.  Stewart had been an actor for years at this point, having been trained as a Shakespearean actor who played the London stage in tights that looked every sillier than the spandex uniforms he was asked to don for the first two years as Picard (Gene Roddenberry’s death allowed the producers to switch to more comfortable wool uniforms later in the series run).  Later on, he played a character that sheer dumb luck was designed to look exactly like him, Professor Charles Xavier.  Ask a number of geek fans if they know any other role he’s done, and they might be hard-pressed to name something.

Geek Love is not misplaced in this instance.  We should love Patrick Stewart if for no other reason than he seems to be having fun most of the time, and he may very well be up for anything.

That’s Not Really How It Works!: Civics And The Fictional Presidency

We all know the story about the timing of the issue that featured this panel, right?

I greatly enjoy DC Comics’ Showcase Presents series of black and white reprints.  Sometimes they feature obscure characters, or just stories that would be far too expensive to hunt down the original comics in order to read, and at the price of below $15 each, the 500+ pages are generally worth it.  Besides, sometimes there’s some outright screwiness going on.  Take the original appearance of longtime foe of the Aton the Floronic Man, Jason Woodroe.  At the end of the issue, there’s a quick courtroom scene where a judge states that he is going to be handling certain procedures before Woodroe can be hauled off to a federal court for the crime of attempting to take over the world.

This tickles me for the very implications of what that panel suggests, namely that in that universe, the United States Congress proposed, debated, voted on, and passed a bill outlawing attempted world conquest.  Said law was then signed by a president.  I am sure for the juvenile readers of the original stories, this doesn’t seem too wild, but really, that’s the sort of thing that really catches my attention.

That said, let’s look at some fictional presidents.