It was about a president. Was his name Sam? He lived in an apartment. and mingled with the common folk. It might have been in the National Lampoon. It wasn’t a daily strip.
I know it isn’t much. But does it ring a bell with anyone?
Whoa.
I’m a serious comics freak, strips & books, but I never heard of anything quite like this.
Any notion of how long it ran?
In what decade?
The 70’s I think.
I was a serious(?) reader of National Lampoon all through the 70s, and that doesn’t ring any bells. Any other clues, no matter how slim?
Same here. I don’t believe it was in the Lampoon. An underground comic, perhaps? Think, man, think!
Ditto. I’ve got tons of old comics, and boxes of old NatLamps, and that doesn’t ring any bells at all.
Sure you didn’t dream it?
Wasn’t there an alternative newspaper strip that appeared in weekly papers about a common salt of the earth kind of president? He instituted an odd form of government – the randomocracy, I think – and as a result ended up with a VP who was the cleaning lady, because he took the “next persn who walks thrugh that door.”
Timeline was late 80s, tho. But he was a hippie kind a guy.
The NatLamp did run a strip similar to what you describe. I think the title was “Man of the People.” The art was by S. Harris and the concept was “What if the president were a public servant?” The idea was that the president was just a government worker on a government salary, so it showed the president needing to scramble for, say, a place to entertain foreign dignitaries.
It only ran once or twice, though.
You are thinking of President Bill, by William L. Brown. It ran in various alternative newspapers, including the Washington D.C. City Paper and the Chicago Reader, from 1988-1992. Bill, a member of the Woodstock Generation, became president through the first Presidential Selection Lottery. He instituted “randomocracy,” and selected Evita, his day-care provider for his kid, in the way you describe.
I loved that strip, and I have the book.