My good friend Dustin, a longtime comic book aficionado and fellow sojourner on numerous historical road trips, leveled this challenge in a comment to my last post: “Extra Credit: combine Dr. Manhattan and William Howard Taft. Show your work.”
Fusing America’s 27th President with Watchmen‘s blue-skinned, nuclear-powered superhero is a tall order indeed. A tall order, that is, for a lesser historical blogger than myself. All I need is a picture of Taft and Microsoft’s Paint program, and then consider it done…
(CUE TRUMPET FANFARE)
Washington, D.C. 1912. During a top-secret experiment in a laboratory hidden beneath the Smithsonian, mild-mannered commander-in-chief William Howard Taft accidentally leaves his Twinkie behind in an atomic test chamber. Rushing to retrieve it, he finds himself locked inside as the dreadful mechanisms switch on. . .
His body transformed in the ensuing firestorm, Taft is granted powers far beyond those of mortal heads of state. Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s. . .
DR. MANTAFTAN!!!
Tell the folks at HNN they can just go ahead and give me that Cliopatria Award now.
(Pre-lab accident Taft portrait from Wikimedia Commons)
Past in the Present 