Obama meets Spider-Man

Are even superheroes in the tank for the president-elect?

As if becoming president isn’t enough, Barack Obama gets a chance to fulfill “his other childhood dream,” too, said Susan Davis in The Wall Street Journal online. A collector of comics as a child, Obama is featured in a Jan. 14 bonus issue of Marvel Comic’s Amazing Spider-Man series, set to coincide with his inauguration. Marvel, and Obama’s fellow comic book enthusiasts, are apparently excited to have “one of their own in the White House.”

In more ways than one, said Debbie Schlussel in Big Hollywood. Comic book writers used to be “against Nazis and Hitler and were very up-front in supporting America’s fight against them,” and now DC and Marvel have “embraced left-wing politics.” So “get out the barf bag”—now “Spider-Man is in the tank for Obama.”

“Yes, there’s a fist bump,” said Tirdad Derakhshani in The Philadelphia Inquirer, but at least the writers include slightly subversive humor: "In one panel, the superhero says he mistook veep-elect Joe Biden for the villainous Vulture.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Fictional villains aren’t Obama’s problem—he has enough on his hands with the global economic meltdown, said Gerald Baker in The Times of London. What he really needs is a real-life “superhero to help him to rescue the U.S. economy.” The U.S. consumer, the regular “hero of the global economy” over the past decade, is on strike.

The Obama issue of Spider-Man might help with that, too, said newswire ANI in Thaindian News. U.S. merchandise hawkers are “cheerfully making a mint by selling Barack Obama-branded articles,” including T-shirts, collectible plates, boxers, hot sauce, “Yes Pecan” ice cream, and now, comic books. Not all of it is in good taste, but it’s worth “hundreds of millions of dollars” to an economy that needs it.

To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us