Ten things that occurred to me while I was reading Amazing Spider-Man: Election Day

—The blurbs chosen for the back cover reflected the collectible nature of the Obama cover, rather than the contents or quality of the book. There’s one from Geoff Boucher of the Los Angeles Times and another from David Colton of USA Today. The former simply states that Obama hangs out with Spider-Man, and was seemingly from a news story about the issue rather than a review; the latter states “In a growing world of Barack Obama collectibles, one item soon may be swinging above the rest.”

The “collectible” being referred to, however, isn’t this collection, of course, but one of the comic books that originally contained one of the stories found inside this book. There’s therefore something rather…tricksy about the blurb.

There are two more blurbs on the inside of the book jacket; these aren’t from mainstream media outlets like the LA Times or USA Today, which is probably why they’re relegated to the inside, but they do speak to the quality of the work. Adam Chapman of Comixtreme.com says something about writer Marc Gugenheim’s script, and Daniel Schmergel of IGN.com says something nice about John Romita Jr’s artwork (“He is the Spider-Man artist of his generation”).


—Someone really needs to declare a moratorium on the telling-the-story-through-news-anchors device in superhero comics. Marc Guggenheim relies on it extensively throughout the “Election Day” storyline that accounts for most of this collection’s 180-pages, and it’s beyond tiresome. Perhaps it didn’t read quite so cheap and hackneyed when experienced in a serial comic book, one scene every week or two, but man was it irritating to have the same two talking heads appear every 20 pages or so to re-explain what I just read.


—Guggenheim’s five-issue story arc that forms the bulk of this book was surprisingly enjoyable. I haven’t been following ASM regularly, but the plot was easy to follow, the execution was engaging, and the big events and revelations—the identity of Menace, the secret behind The Spider-Tracer Killer, the winner of the New York City mayoral election—still hit with impact.

Guggenheim doesn’t write the best Spider-Man fight chatter—his jokes are neither genuinely funny nor funny in their corny unfunniness—but because the arc was so plot-oriented, Spider-Man’s voice was much less important than what was going on around him.


—John Romita Jr. is awesome. As long as he’s drawing a Spider-Man story, it can’t help but seem right on some level. I can’t help but think “One More Day” would have went down infinitely more smoothly if he were drawing it instead of Joe Quesada.


—While the Spider-Man office has seemingly done a pretty good job of assembling a “brain trust” of comics scripters to keep Amazing Spider-Man going as a fast-paced, plot-driven soap opera comic, finding artist whose style work together quite as smoothly is infinitely more challenging.

Romita dominates this book, and draws almost the entirety of the “Election Day” arc, but there’s a brief, one-issue interlude drawn by Barry Kitson and a pair of inkers, and the style-shift is quite jarring.

The other, shorter stories feature art by Marcos Martin, Andy MacDonald, Todd Nauck and, in the worst example of style shift coming in a single issue penciled by Fabrizio Fiorentino, whose work looks like this:


And Patrick Olliffe, whose work looks like this:

Each artist in that story, “With Great Responsibility Comes Great Power,” were inked and colored by different artists too, so that the two portions of the story—Spider-Man at Night Nurse’s office and Peter Parker checking in with his friends after the events of “Election Day”—look like they’re from entirely different comic books.


—Marcos Martin should draw every Spider-Man story that John Romita Jr. doesn’t have time to draw himself. The story of his collected here, “The Spartacus Gambit” from Amazing Spider-Man: Extra #1, is a court room drama telling some of the events of “Election Day” in much greater detail, and it’s just beautiful, beautiful work. Whether it’s lawyers standing around talking, or a dozen Spider-Men bouncing around a courtroom, every single image is dynamic and fun.


—The “Spidey Meets The President” story in which Spider-Man meets Obama is greatly expanded, and comes across as perhaps too a-political, with Senator John McCain being written into the story, so as to achieve something approaching “equal time” I guess.

The extra pages don’t really add much, other than giving Todd Nauck further opportunity to demonstrate he doesn’t do political likenesses very well.

Here’s his Joe Biden, who doesn’t get all that Biden-esque until the very last panel…

…and here’s his McCain, who, um, doesn’t look a damn thing like McCain…



—Matt Fraction and Andy MacDonald’s six-page Presidents’ Day Special story, “Gettysburg Distress!”, which was originally presented online, is a lot more boring than I would have thought possible for a story featuring this cover. I mean, the first panel has Professor Abraham Von Lincolnstein, “The villain so loopy he steals five dollar bills and “corrects” them with his own twisted image!”—breaking through a band wall with his robot gang, and the last panel has Spider-Man offering Captain America a fruit pie, but in between it’s just Captain America watching President Lincoln deliver the Gettysburg dress.


—The book also contains the covers of the second, third, fourth and fifth printings of ASM #583, “The Obama issue.” They’re all pretty much the exact same image…the backgrounds are swapped out, and different dialogue bubbles pasted up next to Spidey, but it’s just the same drawing of Obama giving a thumbs up while Spidey takes a picture of the back of his head over and over.



—The “Decade Variant” of ASM #599 featuring President Nixon is not included.
That is a damn shame.

My four favorite single panels from David Rees' Get Your War On

When I saw the new Get Your War On collection, the one shaped like an American flag, had the phrase "the definitive account of the war on terror, 2001-2008" on the cover, I assumed that was just some of author David Rees' humorous hyperbole. Rees is, after all, quite enamored of hyperbole, as his rather uncomfortable blog demonstrates on a pretty much daily basis.

But then I sat down and read it. Or re-read it actually, since I had read almost every one of these strips as they originally appeared online, and I realized that even if there is some sarcasm in the boastful "definitive account" subtitle, I'm certainly hard-pressed to think of a better account of the last seven years of the "War on Terror." (Or should that be "war" on "terror"...?)

As I reread these, I was reliving every horrible, hilarious, infuriating, unbelievable event of the Bush administration prosecution of the War (uppercase-W) and the wars (lowercase-w's) that it quickly devolved into. Reading these, I remembered where I was the first time I read them and where I was and what I was thinking when I read the news or watched the speech or interview that they were reacting to. It's seven-years of bad news, seven years of my life and your life and the nation's life, in 250 pages.

It's amazing to reread them at this point in history too, after the majority of the country finally—finally!—came around to seeing things Rees' way, and to look back at what he was writing back in 2001 and see how little has actually changed on some very important fronts. It was still fall of 2001 when his clip art cubicle-jockeys were howling about the fact that the United States couldn't seem to find Bin Laden, or catch whoever was mailing the anthrax, counting down the days until Bush went into Iraq for no reason and wondering after Vice President Dick Cheney's fear of light.

And you know what? Rees was right like, 95% of the time (One thing he got wrong was when one of his characters, shocked that eight weeks of bombing Afghanistan had yet to kill bin Laden, said that U.S. bombing raids must be like the elixir of eternal life, and that Saddam Hussein would therefore live to be 400-years-old). He was certainly more right more often than, say, The New York Times or NBC News or Newsweek or Time or Bob Woodward, and therefore deserves the right to put "definitive account" on his book more than just about anyone else who consistently commented on the war.

That said, something is lost by reading the book in this format, rather than the individual strips as they came out. Like after Bush's state of the union speech, in which he suddenly brought up doping in baseball as a major issue, the next day GYWO featured Black Guy and Standing Up White Guy with their shirts torn off revealing body builder bodies, and flexing their free hand while they talked on the phone. Without the context of having just heard the same speech, it's not all that funny, and it's a particular strip that may not age all that well say, for future generations. (Ditto the ones where Black Guy suddenly starts wearing a space helmet for a half-dozen strips or so, after Bush brought up prioritizing a mission to Mars for...some reason). I guess I'll reread this in 25 years and let you guys know how it holds up.

I was going to write an actual serious, considered review of the book in this post—the kind where I start the title of the post with the word "review" and a colon—but I honestly don't see much of a point. By December of 2008, you've either been reading Rees or you haven't, and I don't think there's anything I could say here that's going to encourage anyone who hasn't to give it a chance now. I honestly, 100-percent sincerely now, believe this strip is one of the most important and relevant documents of the last seven years of American history, and I don't have much else to add to that, beyond pointing to certain strips and saying, "Ha ha, remember this one? That one was funny."

So instead of a review-review, I offer my four favorite individual panels from strips:









Not that the panels above are any funnier out of context than they are in, or that the strips they're part of themselves aren't funny. I just really, really like these panels, and I think they stand up all by themselves without even needing to be embedded in a strip.

The smoking gun panel isn't even the punchline panel in the October 2003 strip it's from (That one's "You mean die of boredom, waiting for a goddam real smoking gun?"), it's simply the middle of a three-panel strip. And there's the argument for the Iraq War, as sold by the administration and re-sold by the entire mainstream media in one simple sentence.

The third one down, "Holy shit— that guy was the PRESIDENT???" is probably the greatest single encapsulation of President Bush's overall performance I've ever seen. It's from a February 2004 strip, one that came right after Bush gave an interview to the late, great Tim Russert (who softball-ed the hell out of him). Again, that's not even the punchline...it's simply the second of a four-panel conversation. (The very next panel? "You got it. Remember Abraham Lincoln? This guy has the same job.")

Likewise, the two panels featuring Standing Up White Guy also refer to Bush; the definition of "elitist" offered in the second panel is one that's stuck with me ever since I read that strip. I've never understood how exactly "elitist" came to be an insult in politics. We saw it in this just-ended presidential campaign, where Obama being perceived as an elitist was supposed to be a bad thing; call me crazy, but I kind of thing the most powerful man in the United States government, one of—if not the—most powerful men in the world should be something of an elite.

Finally, and perhaps a little more timely, here's the final panel of a three-panel strip from way back in April of 2006, which I offer only as an example of Rees' predictive prowess:



The strip was responding to McCain giving a speech at Jerry Falwell's college, despite having called Falwell and his ilk "agents of intolerance" in 2000. This was one of the first big zigs in McCain's two-year march to losing the White House, during which he constantly strove to de-maverickify himself and return to his pre-2000 conservative roots. The previous panel was the black guy saying "Someone should ask Mcain if he agrees with Falwell that 9/11 was caused by teh ACLU and lesbians. Because if he does, he'll have to support bombing Lilith Fair."

Anyway, here we are two and a half years later, and what's become of McCain since then? Why he's turned into a complete fucking joke. David Rees wins again!

And they'll never have to draw John McCain again...

Some Republicans will say that part of the reason Barack Obama trounced John McCain in Tuesday's election was the media's obvious bias in favor of Obama.

While I saw very little evidence of news media favoring Obama at McCain's expense, I don't doubt that the individual reporters were rooting for the Democrat this time out.

The McCain campaign probably made them feel weird, as it likely made anyone who watched McCain's last run for the Whitehouse feel weird. Here was this affable old guy they used to like, a beloved uncle figure, making a fool of himself in public on a daily basis for the better part of a year, systematically and transparently reversing himself on position after position and statement after statement in order to win an election, no matter what the cost to his own reputation, his party, or his country.

If he won, America would have just one more old, white, warmongering plutocrat as a its new president, plus its first female vice president, which would have been sorta historic, but the fact that she wasn't ready to appear on Meet The Press, let alone ready to be president, probably squashed many folks' enthusiasm for her to be a heartbeat or cancer relapse away from the presidency.

But if Obama won? America would have its first black president, and, well, you've seen what a tremendous storyline that is in the days since Tuesday...it's given those in the media a lot to say, words that were potentially of import not just to their readers and viewers and listeners, but to American history itself. Surely that's gotta be a little incentive to want to root for a guy, right? (It's probably also worth noting that the McCain campaign openly campaigned against the media from the time of Obama's trip overseas on, to the point where their scary rally attendees were booing the media in the last weeks. McCain/Palin are lucky the media even wanted to talk about, let alone to, them by late October).

It wasn't just network news desk jockeys, newspaper-people, columnist and commentators who had the opportunity to take part in history with Obama's election; so too did political cartoonists, who had to be hyper-aware that the panels they were drawing in the hours after the election was called for Obama were likely to be their biggest and most important ones since their 9/11 cartoons.

I was pretty eager to see how they would rise and/or fall to the occasion, so I spent some time searching Daryl Cagle's Professional Cartoon Index and Slate.com's Today's Cartoons on Wednesday and Thursday for "Obama Wins!" cartoons.

Let's take a look together, shall we?



Ha ha, our knight in shining armor Barack Obama has slain the horrible monster that is John McCain, a hideous, bleached old man head perched atop a dragon's body. Or is that a dinosaur's body, meant to signify that not only is McCain a monster, but he is also old and of another, past age?

A pretty strong statement either way. I wonder if cartoonist Daryl Cagle had a McCain one ready to go in case McCain won, and if it featured McCain in a suit of armor, sitting atop the corpse of a vanquished Obama dragonsaurus, or if it featured the McCain monster having killed the Obama knight...?



I...what? What is... I can't even... Huh.

Well, this is by Rainer Hachfeld of Germany, and well, maybe the humor is so German it doesn't quite translate...?

Let's just move on...


You know who this election probably mattered most to? President Abraham Lincoln. That guy would have just been reacting left and right to this election, if he were alive today...or if his giant, stone form seated in the Lincoln Memorial could communicate his thoughts to us. Which, through the magic of political cartoons, it can! Let's look at a few of the several thousand cartoons dealing with the Lincoln Memorial's take on the historic election of Barack Obama now.



The Lincoln Memorial is so happy about the results that he/it is beaming with joy and, perhaps, pride. Jeff Breen of the San Diego Union-Tribune helpfully includes the date prominently in the image, to provide context should someone encounter this on a day that isn't the day after Obama's electoral victory. See, what'd I tell you? Cartoonists are thinking ahead to how history will judge their work on this day.



Here's Lincoln, a long-time Obama/Biden supporter, reacting to the news the same way so many people did: By weeping. What a pussy.



Having won the grueling, hard-fought battle against his opponent John McCain, Obama (or his stunt double?) declares victory, while it's up to the Lincoln Memorial to decide the vanquished McCain's fate. Is he to be put out of his misery, or spared in honor of his valor? Emperor Lincoln gives him the thumbs up; McCain is spared.



Here's Clay Jones of Fredricksburg's Freelance-Star's Lincoln reaction, and it appears our greatest giant stone president is being...lewd, I guess. He opens his legs wide to show someone with giant ears—presumably President-elect Obama, but perhaps current president Bush—his glowing crotch. The spectator seems stunned by the sight, and Lincoln wears a slightly embarrassed, goofy-grin. This Lincoln definitely seems to be out of his log cabin, if you know what I mean.



At least this Lincoln is a little more lady-like, and has crossed his legs. If that is Lincoln. It doesn't much look like him, does it? Whoever he is, he's keeping his thoughts about Obama's victory to himself, but it's clearly made him think.



He's spread his legs wide, he's crossed them demurely, and now he's finally gotten up and left his chair. Why can't the Lincoln Memorial sit still?

In the Orlando Sentinel's Dana Summer's cartoon, Lincoln has gone to Chicago, where Barack Obama gave his victory speech on Tuesday night, and he hasn't come back yet.

What did Abe go there for? To cheer Obama on? Or to stop him? I don't know, but Cartoon Curmudgeon Josh Fruhlinger has an interesting theory.



Oh, he's back from Chicago. And so is Obama. I guess the Lincoln Memorial is just kinda stalking Obama, now?

Here Lincoln seems pretty pissed off about Obama's victory, or is he just pissed off at the way Obama's strolling around the mall with a stupid grin on his face, showing off the headline of the day? Cartoonist Glenn McCoy's Lincoln iss definitely wearing an unhappy expression, and his thought bubble seems pretty negative.

To be honest, I don't even get this one. Is the joke that Obama sucks, but he fooled everyone into thinking he's awesome, and that's why he won? Because as significant as his victory was in terms of both electoral votes and actual voter votes, it wasn't a shut out, or, popular vote-wise, even a landslide. So clearly he didn't fool all of the people, just some of them.

So what's this Lincoln thinking about, anyway? And what's up the Lincoln Memorial's ass in this cartoon? Maybe some of the other Lincolns oughta talk to him.



Here he's expressing incredulity. He can't quite believe it at first. Is he happy? Chagrined? I can't tell. He's smiling, but it seems like an awkward, nervous smile.

You can click on the link above for several more cartoons featuring Lincoln's reaction to Obama's election.



I really like this one. I don't know that we need the "MLK" label there—surely King's visage is just as, if not way more, familiar than Obama's is—but it's a nice drawing of both men, and the giving of daps. It's great having a president who can give and receive daps, isn't it?



Pairing Obama with Martin Luther King was almost as popular a strategy as pairing him with Lincoln. This is a political cartoon that is more sober and symbolic than funny (As were a lot of the day after 'toons, few of which I've actually included here).

I was really struck here by how similar to Bush Obama looks. Not in real life, of course, but in this cartoon by Thomas Boldt of the Calgary Sun—and in plenty of other political cartoons. They both share the same most caricature-able feature—their big ears—and both dress the same, so I suppose its not surprise that a lot of cartoonists' Obama look a lot like their Bushes. If this were black and white, it would really look a lot like Bush with a more prominent chin being lifted atop the pedestal of history by MLK.



Another Obama/MLK cartoon, and another cartoon in which Obama looks like he could just as easily be Bush, this one by Henry Payne of the Detroit News. Of course, we can't see Obama's face here, so it's only his ears that identify him. Well, his ears, and the piece of paper with his name on it that he's carrying. I wonder what that is? A folder full of very important documents, that Michelle wrote his name on, so one of the girls wouldn't accidentally take it to school with them, and he wouldn't accidentally bring their spelling homework to a big meeting with his economic advisors?




Apparently unsure of which historical figure would be most excited about the Obama victory, King or Lincoln, Chris Britt of Springfield, IL's State-Journal Register went with both. Here they are jumping and high-fiving each other. Daps would have been funnier.

The labeling strategy employed here kind of confuses me. MLK is labeled "MLK," so readers who might not have ever seen a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. will know who he is. But Lincoln is wearing a pin marked Obama, apparently because he was an Obama supporter (Just like Colin Powell, Lincoln's apparently a Republican who was rooting for the Democratic candidate this year), but under normal circumstances, characters in political cartoons would only wear pins with their own names on them, and that, clearly, isn't Obama.



Regarding Obama's similarities to Bush, the best way to distinguish Bush from Obama isn't the latter's chin and hair (although Indianapolis Star-News cartoonist Gary Varvel explodes the chin a bit here too), but in Obama's long, gangly frame and limbs. Obama seems like a pretty fun subject for political cartoonists, as it's not just his face that gives them material to work with, but his whole body.

Bill should really have at least a jacket on, shouldn't he? For warmth as much as any sartorial concerns; late January in D.C. is going to be pretty cold, isn't it? Or is one of Obama's many super-powers weather control?



You know who else had a long, gangly frame and limbs? Jack Skellington of The Nightmare Before Christmas, which the Pittsburgh Tribute-Review's Randy Bish is alluding to in this pretty weak carton. His Obama's not even all that Skellingtonal, and I'm afraid I don't quite get it. Obama's election is a "nightmare?" Why? Or is it just so obvious that there's no need to explain it? And November 5th was almost two months before Christmas, so it is therefore a nightmare before Christmas...? Kind of a stretch.



Speaking of nightmares, check out Damien Glez's horrifying cartoon. There are eagle talons projecting out of the sides of Obama's face! Gah!

To end on a less scary note, here are two I liked a whole lot, which I found on other comics blogs. Here's Patrick Moberg's beautiful image, which is also a powerful but elegant underliner of the significance of Obama's victory (link discovered at Tom Spurgeon's Comicsreporter.com). And here's a superhero-fueled Sinfest by Tatsuya Ishida, chronicling what I can only hope is Obama's first meeting with his new cabinet (link from Johanna Draper Carlson's Comicsworthreading).

A long, boring post about three of my favorite things to talk about: Superheroes, politics and myself

In the month before Tuesday’s historic election, I did about twenty of these “super-endorsements” sketch/strip things, in which my cartoon avatar interviewed various super-types about who they were supporting in the election. I had planned to do a lot more originally, but due to how long it took me to draw and color, how hard it was to figure out to draw some things, how unfunny the jokes associated with the endorsements were or, in some cases, all of the above, I ended up scrapping a bunch. But as I’m reluctant to waste any comics-related thinking I do—and as desperate as I am to think of something to post on a Saturday when no one’s reading anyway—I thought I’d share the ones I didn’t do. That’s right, as bad as some of the final strips were, there were some that were even worse! And these are what they were…


The Hulk: I first thought of doing these one day while listening to NPR coverage of an Obama rally, and hearing the “Yes we can! Yes we can!” chanting in the background, and thinking it sounded a little like “Yes me am! Yes me am!”, as I was apparently thinking about Bizarro that day (Um, I think about Bizarro a lot). Then there was a day where I was in a very big, very long meeting, with lots of time to do nothing but think and pretend to be listening intently, and I made a list of 30 superheroes and villains, figuring I’d do a theme month sketchblog thing. I ended up doing far fewer, and only about half of the ones I thought to do that day, for various reasons; some of them I ditched when more amusing one’s occurred to me later. One I didn’t think to do was The Hulk, but about halfway through October I did think of a Hulk gag, which I started. That’s the first of three panels above. The second one would have had Hulk’s feet in the upper right-hand corner, and Caleb in the act of falling (Sound effect of Hulk jumping: BOUND!). In the last panel, Caleb would be sitting on the ground, writing in his notebook and sounding out loud, “Lib…er..tar…ian.” Something about it didn’t seem quite right though, like perhaps I’d heard it before. I checked the place I was most likely to have heard it—Dave Campbell’s excellent 2006 post about superheroes’ political alignments—and damn it, wouldn’t you know he did make that exact same joke? I was apparently ripping him off subconsciously, so I abandoned that one. I guess because his Hulk joke was so short, it didn’t stick in my mind quite the way that his other’s did. Anyway, there’s the first panel I did above! Waste not, want not.

Aquaman: Seemed kinda pointless to do Aquaman and Namor, as I imagine they would have similar positions, they’d just express them differently. King Orin was totally pulling for Obama. Like Namor, he was furious over the Republican ticket’s stance on off-shore drilling, and the glib, “Drill, baby, drill chants.” He was also pissed about the Palin pick, as she doesn’t believe global warming is necessarily caused by man (one of several policy differences she had with McCain; “With a team of mavericks, what would you expect?”). Aquaman hates global warming. Not only is it fucking things up for sea life, but if the polar ice caps melt and the sea levels rise significantly, that will only make the ocean bigger, and he’s got enough to do now, thank you very much.

Black Lightning: I think of him as super-sensitive about racial issues, and always ready to argue about them. Not because the character’s ever actually like that in the comics, but just because he calls himself “Black Lightning.” It’s probably more accidental than anything else, but the original Black Lightning came across in conception as a very blaxploitation kind of character, which probably didn’t seem so weird in the late seventies and early eighties (especially since he was DC’s only black hero for a while), but now it seems extra-weird (As we’ve discussed). This strip would have been a long, awkward conversation starting with Caleb saying, “I imagine you’re voting for Obama,” and B.L. would defensively ask if Caleb thought that just because he black, which would lead to discussion of the fact that John McCain voted against MLK Day for so long, or that during the 2000 Republican primary he said he supported South Carolina flying the Confederate flag over the statehouse (he later apologized for it, and called the stance one of his biggest mistakes) or because of all the racist assholes that show up at Palin/McCain rallies. Demographically, Black Lightning is almost certainly Democrat—black, urban, inner-city high school teacher—so I’m sure he would be for Obama. This would have been an “educational” strip, mentioning the candidates’ educational policies and McCain’s less-savory history regarding some racial issues, but it seemed way too long, and I didn’t feel like drawing Black Lighting 20 times in a row. Particularly in his stupid, stupid costume.

N’Kantu, The Living Mummy: I really like drawing mummies. N’Kantu was going to explain that he doesn’t normally vote, as he never identifies with any of the candidates, but since there was a living mummy running this year, he was voting McCain. Ha ha ha, huh? But “McCain is old jokes” seemed way played out, and stopped being funny and started being downright scary around the time he announced his vice presidential pick, so I abandoned this idea. I also considered having Ra’s al Ghul and/or Jonah Hex endorsing Obama/endorsing McCain based on experiences they had with McCain in the past, but, again, old jokes seemed old. (For the record, Ra’s prefers Obama’s environmental policies, and Hex isn’t sure he could bring himself to vote for a colored…especially one whom the NRA says wants to take away his guns…although, when looking at where Obama and McCain are on gun control, there’s almost no difference I can see).

The Riddler: I never gave it much thought before trying to think of something The Riddler might say, but goddam, he must be the hardest Batman villain for Bat-writers to write. I was going to have him be all like, “A question? For the Riddler? Usually I ask the questions” and blah blah blah, and then he’d be like, “Could you phrase it in the form of a riddle?” And Caleb would be like, “Um, no.” And then he’d be like, “Well, I’ll answer it in the form of a riddle then.” And his endorsement would have come in the form of a very complicated riddle, one that was so complicated it wouldn’t actually even reveal which candidate he was, since I don’t know who the Riddler would vote for and honestly couldn’t even hazard a guess. But I couldn’t think of a riddle that the answer to which would be either Obama or McCain. So that’s as far as I got with that. In the last two panels, batarangs would knock both Caleb and the Riddler out, and then we’d see a panel of Robin scolding Batman saying, “Hey, isn’t the Riddler reformed now? And I think that other guy was just an innocent bystander.” In my mind, Batman’s always just running around, sneaking up on people and brutally assaulting them for pretty much no reason. Thus he always errs on the side of knocking someone out with a batarang.

The Spectre/Ghost Rider: As it turns out, both of the major party candidates have identical thoughts on the death penalty, so The Spectre, Ghost Rider and other agents of spiritual vengeance likely wouldn’t prefer one to the other. It’s just as well, as I don’t think I could draw Ghost Rider at all. I like drawing skeletons, but I hate drawing both motorcycles and skeletons wearing jackets. Both the Spectre and Ghost Rider were big fans of President Bush’s though, as our current Commander-in-Chief had a real zeal about executing people, even going so far as to mock a woman begging for her life in an on-the-record interview while he was still governor of Texas. (Campbell offers a very reasonable rationale as to how Ghost Rider would vote, however; seriously, go read the hell out of that post).

Man-Elephant: I believe his party is evident. The only reason I didn’t do a post on him was because I ran out of time.

Storm and Black Panther: The Kenyan-American Storm and Wakandian king are both pro-Obama, of course, although Storm was disappointed she hadn’t heard more from Obama regarding his stance on mutant rights issues. A friend pointed out that Storm’s heritage is just like Obama’s, only the genders of their parents were reversed (Her dad was American and her mom Kenyan; his dad was Kenyan and his mom American). Based on Obama’s speeches, I’m sure the 616 Obama would include “homo superior or homo sapien” in his list of “we’re all Americans” this or that constructions, like “black or white or Hispanic or Native American…gay or straight, disabled or not” and so on. I couldn’t think of a joke though, as Storm and B.P. are both so damn regal and humorless, that it was essentially just three straightmen discussing identity politics. I like drawing the Black Panther though; he’s like a short-eared Batman without a mouth.

Dr. Sivana: I really like Dr. Sivana. I like reading about him, I like looking at pictures of him, I like drawing him and I like just sitting still and thinking about him. I was going to have him vote for the Natural Law Party, which is how I personally wasted my vote in 2000 (I thought Gore had a lock! I followed the election closely, and thought, “Man, there’s no way anyone would prefer this Bush goofball to Gore, I can safely vote Third Party. I was so young and naïve back then…). The Natural Law Party, at least at the time, articulated the belief that government should work according to sound, proven scientific principles (and something about transcendental meditation). That sounds like something that would appeal to a scientist, even (or particularly?) a mad one. When I tried to find out who their candidate was this year though, it appeared they weren’t even fielding one. So maybe Sivana sat this election out; it’s not like he cares who rules America, after all; he was going to rule the whole universe one day anyway.

Captain America: This one was going to be the climactic one, in which Caleb is in a graveyard, staring at Captain America’s grave, and remarking how that would have been the ultimate superhero endorsement; whoever Cap endorsed would have had a good shot at winning. “Too bad I can’t ask him now,” or something like that, and then suddenly Obama and McCain would appear and say something like, “Who says you can’t?” They would produce a Ouija board and we would use it to contact Cap’s spirit. McCain would try to pull it toward the “M” for McCain, and Obama would try to pull it toward the “O” for Obama, and the result would be that it hovered over the letter between those two letters: “N.” And then Ralph Nader would jump out from behind a tombstone to accept the endorsement. It became clear that I wouldn’t have time to do this one though, especially since it would take me quite a while to figure out how to draw Obama and McCain and Nader. I used to sit down with a Newsweek once a week and just sketch things out of it for drawing practice, but I haven’t done that forever, and so I’m not up on drawing any current national figures, I’m afraid. And plus, McCain looks damn hard to draw. Every political cartoonist does him totally different. I really like Ann Telnaes’ and Tom Toles’ McCains, though.

The Red Bee: McCain and Obama have been running for president for at least two years now (this time; McCain’s been thinking about it in an on/off kinda way for at least a decade now), so you’d think they would have both covered every conceivable topic by now, right? Well, would you believe neither of them have said anything at all about bees? I thought at least the subject of the disappearing honeybees and what that might mean for the future might have come up at some point on the campaign trail but, if it did, I was unable to find it after researching the topic online a lot longer than I probably should have (It’s not like my vote was dependent on the candidates’ bee policies, after all; I was just researching background for a lame joke). It got so bad that I asked the American Beekeeping Federation if they were endorsing a candidate, and they responded, “From what we understand, the candidates have similar views on agricultural policies, but we have no knowledge of their views on bees specifically.” So you can imagine how hard it must have been for The Red Bee to decide who he was going to vote for. If I had enough time (I meant to start drawing these in September, but didn’t actually start until October), this would have run on like Thursday or so. Caleb and Uncle Sam would have been sitting at Caleb’s table, where the first in the series started, with Uncle Sam delightedly reading a manga and Caleb in his pajamas in front of the computer. The Red Bee would have appeared, letting Caleb know that he heard he was going around interviewing various superheroes about who they were supporting in the election, and, since Caleb missed him for some reason, he thought he’d stop by. He was temporarily changing his name (and costume) to The Blue Bee, to let everyone know he supported Obama. Since Obama and McCain are equally uninterested in bee policy, and the honeybee crisis, Bee would have voted for Obama because he’s more environmentally friendly. At least, environmental groups like the Sierra Club favored Obama over McCain, so presumably and Obama presidency would be better for wild bees than a McCain one would have.

Above: This was going to be the last panel of the Man-Thing one, but I fucked up Cage and didn't want to redraw it



By the way: I keep saying “Caleb” instead of “me” or “I” not because I am insane and think of myself in the third person, but because it seems more insane to me to say things like, “So I was talking to Uncle Sam the other day…” The Caleb in these things isn’t really me, obviously, as I’ve never talked to Man-Thing or Superman or Batman. But only because I’ve never been to Florida, Metropolis or Gotham City.

Flag-Smasher:

Bizarro: