Presenting the Greatest Team Ever!!!

Everyone has what I call a "muse room". While it doesn't necessarily have to be a room (it can be a park or a closet or what have you), a muse room is where you spontaneously think up ideas. Where inspiration just strikes like a deadly cobra, except instead of venom which makes you feel dead, you get creative thoughts which make you feel alive. My personal muse room is the shower. I'm not sure why. Maybe when I massage my scalp while shampooing, it activates some dormant brain cells of creativity. But I digress.

I thought of a great new idea for a comic or cartoon series (short cartoons, probably best as a Flash series or something like that) while I was in the shower last night. I've been percolating on it since, and now I think I've got something. I call it:Team Praesieo

And the concept is as follows: due to a temporal anomaly, seven United States Presidents of the past have come together in our time. When they find each other, they decide to become soldiers of fortune, a-la the A-Team. They help the less fortunate while fighting evil villains bent on city and world domination. And they do so with a badass attitude. The members of the team are the following:

Theodore "T.R." Roosevelt: Courageous and charismatic, T.R. is the leader and pblic face of the team. Wearing his traditional Rough Rider uniform (updated with modern equipment), he makes a point to let evildoers know that Team Praesieo will always be on their tail. Despite his history of being a cowboy, T.R. encourages the team to think things carefully before engaging in any action.

Franklin Delano "D" Roosevelt: The most intelligent of the group, D plays the role of the wheelchair-bound computer hacker. His special wheelchair has an onboard server which allows him to jack into any system he can find. Unfortunately, because of his paralysis, he is unable to participate in much of the action. He doesn't mind, though; he plays a huge role in allowing the team to access as much information as they can.

William Howard Taft: They say this cat Taft is a bad mother- "SHUT YOUR MOUTH!" I'm talkin' 'bout Taft. In any event, Taft is large and in charge. Always driving around on a custom motorcycle, he is the teams artillery enthusiast. He always has a Tommy Gun in the ready, as well as a pack of C-4 and some detonators. His favorite item, however, is his large handgun he affectionately calls "The Trust-Buster." One of his quirks is to frequently mention any of his many, many accomplishements. For example, in one scene, some street thug goes up to him and says, "Hey, Taft, I heard there's a sale at the lard factory. You should waddle over there and-" But his words are stopped short when the Trust-Buster is placed in his mouth. Taft then says to him, "In addition to being President, I was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1921-1930, so if I wanted to, I could make it constitutional for me to lodge a bullet IN YOUR SKULL! Do you want that?" And when the thug shakes his head, Taft pulls the gun out. "I didn't think so."

Calvin "Silent Cal" Coolidge: Silent Cal doesn't speak. Ever. And you never know when he's coming up to you unless he's there. His character is most like a special operative. He carries with him a small collection of knives with which he eliminates enemies. He doesn't always use them, though; sometimes he'll just walk up behind his prey and snap their neck. He is very slippery, hard to catch, and very cold. Works as an infiltrator and assassin.

Andrew "Hickory" Jackson: Hickory is the strong man of the group, and has an attitude to boot. Tough, rugged, and always ready for a fight, he's the man to call if you have a boulder to lift or an army to fight. Unfortunately, his attitude sometimes gets the best of him, as his enemies will trick him into duels (he can't resist a duel) that he gets trapped in. He's at his best when roughing it in the wilderness.

Franklin "Frankie" Pierce: Frankie is the kid of the group. He has a good heart, and a lot of spunk, but he doesn't always know what the right path is. He looks up to T.R. as a father figure and D as a big brother. He wants to make a difference in the world, but is sometimes so headstrong that he'll run straight into trouble without a way to get out. He also has a running joke where he's trying to get a girlfriend, but it always end up hilariously wrong.

Ulysses "Useless" S. Grant: While everyone has high expecations of Useless S. Grant, he never fails to dissapoint them. All he ever does is drink. He actually adds nothing to the team, other than comic relief.
"Grant, you were supposed to watch the headquarters last night!"
"I...I had a date."
"A date? With who?"
"Gretta Woods.........brand whiskey! Bwahahaha!"
"Grant, you're useless!"

While they're all on the same team, they are not always in the same mindset. There's two main "sides" to the team. On one side is the more traditional members: T.R., D, and Frankie. On the other side is the more action-oriented members of the team: Taft, Silent Cal, and Hickory. (Grant is too drunk to pick sides.) T.R. and Taft, while professional, obviously aren't friends, as they split the Republican party in 1912 over a few differences. The action-oriented members think Taft would be a more fitting leader to the team, but for the most part, the status quo holds.

Now, the team faces various enemies, both from history and from the modern day. Of course, there has to be an overseeing villain, a Lex Luthor of sorts. For Team Praesieo. This villain is Tīmūr bin Taraghay Barlas, better known as Tamerlane. More specifically, I wanted to use the masked version seen in my favorite video game, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. Here's some really crappy pictures I took to give you a better idea:



Why Tamerlane? Well, for one thing, he's not the obvious (and frankly, boring) choice of Hitler. Secondly, he's a conqueror, so it works well with the whole, y'know, world conquest idea. Third, he made the following speech before he sacked Damascus:

"I am the scourge of God, appointed to chastise you, since no one knows the remedy for your iniquity except me. You are wicked, but I am more wicked than you, so be silent."

If that's not an awesome speech, I don't know what is. So, he's the main villain. The way I see it, when he got caught in the temporal anomaly, he became a billionaire business owner, and that's how he can go about his latest conquest.

And so, Team Praesieo fights against Tamerlane and various other villains, each adventure more daring (and occasionally zany) than the last.

And that's why I like taking showers.