Marvel Team-up: Obama and Spider-man

Amazing Spider-Man #583 Barack Obama Cover Variant
Spider-man and Barack Obama are teaming up to fight crime.

Let me start by saying I do not read, collect or own any comics but if I did, Spiderman would be off my list. By letting Obama get a cameo, old spidey is passively supporting the president elects positions, policies and plans. Passive support is still support.

Just to be clear, I think Obama will fail and on a massive scale, I have seen nothing in his background, character or past performance that makes me believe he is qualified for one of the most difficult jobs on the planet.

I also think the writers of the human bug should stick to comics and not politics.

James Joyner, January 8, 2009
In a growing world of Barack Obama collectibles, one item soon may be swinging above the rest. On Jan. 14, Marvel Comics is releasing a special issue of Amazing Spider-Man #583 with Obama depicted on the cover. Inside are five pages of the two teaming up and even a fist-bump between Spidey and the new president.

“It was a natural after we learned the new president is a Spider-Man fan,” says Marvel editor in chief Joe Quesada about reports that Obama once collected Spider-Man comics. “We thought, ‘Fantastic! We have a comic-book geek in the White House.’”
-I am sure this will be quite the collectors item and as a marketing ploy it is impressive but I do not like Obama and now I do not like Spiderman. Call me a sore loser.

In the story by Zeb Wells, Todd Nauck and Frank D’Armata, Spider-Man stops the Chameleon from spoiling Obama’s swearing-in. At one point, Spider-Man says he mistook Vice President-elect Joe Biden for the Vulture (a vintage Spider-Man villain).

Clever. It’s a smart move from a marketing standpoint but annoying from a continuity standpoint. This firmly establishes Spidey in 2009. Given that high school student Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider in Amazing Fantasy #15 in 1963, that makes him 60-something. Perhaps the various reboots Marvel has done since I’ve fallen off the collecting bandwagon explains that away, but still.
-Like Obama’s abilities, comics are inventions of an overactive imagination. It would be far easier for me to believe in Spiderman than to believe Obama will make a good president, but I am willing to give Spiderman a chance.

The issue, selling for $3.99 at comic-book specialty shops (find one at comicshoplocator.com), is expected to be an instant sellout, especially because the Obama cover, by Phil Jimenez, is limited to half the run. “This issue will have a lot of heat and go for premium prices. I already have people calling about it,” says Alan Giroux, owner of All About Books and Comics in Phoenix. “I expect this will be on the collectors’ market for $20 by the first day.”
-I predict it will go much higher, run out and wait all night to buy one. If you are first to buy one and resale it, you might clear 35 bucks and prove yourself to be a miserable loser doing it (cleverly veiled sarcasm)

Presidents have been supporting characters in comics before: During World War II, superheroes fought Hitler as Franklin D. Roosevelt cheered them on. John F. Kennedy appeared in Action Comics #309 in 1963, when he helped protect Clark Kent’s secret identity. “If I can’t trust the president of the United States, who can I trust?” Superman tells Kennedy. That issue appeared a week after Kennedy was assassinated. DC Comics had to explain later that it was too late to recall the book.
-Superman could not save Kennedy and spidey will not help make or break the Obama
‘s reign of terror.

I did not know that, even though I collected Superman books for many years (granted, I was born two years after the Kennedy assassination). I’ve got some issues of both Superman and Action from that era but am pretty sure I don’t have that issue.
-More than I have or will have, good luck spidey.

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