io9 Roundup of Superhero, Political and Futurist Articles, Part 2

This weekend we've got a roundup of recent, relevant, and few just really cool, articles from the science, science fiction and fantasy blog io9.com. Stay tuned for all the parts.

• Thousands of Australian students are taught that Robots led the Russian Revolution
• This is the most accurate American election map we’ve seen yet
• A first: An electric car has been awarded Motor Trend’s top prize
• 20 Essential Books About the Next Step in Human Evolution
• An Open Letter to the President: US physics education is crap. Let’s fix it.
• Could this immortal hydra polyp inspire advanced rejuvenation therapies for humans?
• The Weirdest Monuments Of The Communist Era That Are Still Standing 
• Which species stand to benefit the most from global warming? 
• What are the worst pseudoscientific myths you ever learned from pop culture? 
• Iron Man concept art shows Tony Stark’s gadgets that we never saw 
• You could own the original sketch that transformed Jack Nicholson into the Joker!
• Could there be life in Earth’s Stratosphere?

Wonder Woman Cover Girl and Other Blips

 Wonder Woman is making an appearance on the cover of the 40th Anniversary Issue of Ms. Magazine in a cover similar to its first issue published in 1972 which also featured the superheroine, which you can read more about here.

Barack Obama will be making his first appearance as a second term president in a comic in Spawn #225, which we had previously mentioned would have a different story based upon who won the election. The issue will be released on November 21st, and you can read more about it here.

A new version of the Watchmen film has been released blending the "Ultimate Cut" with the original graphic novel. Director Zack Snyder has given an interview about the new version, the politics of Watchmen and the new Superman film he's directing, which you can read here.

The Last Bits from the Election

Just a few remainders from the election. First up are the last of the political xkcd comics, the first two from the 2008 election and the last one is from yesterday. Following that is satirical comic from Scenes From A Multiverse, also from yesterday, and right at the bottom is comic from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

Comics Alliance has an article about a comic detailing the 2012 elections that UK newspaper The Guardian created for its readers.

And finally both The Mary Sue and Vox Magazine have articles about who superheroes would support in the elections. The Mary Sue's is more comical and done in cute drawings (as seen below), while Vox Magazine's is more serious and covers most of the A-listers from Marvel and DC.

Vote Today!

Today's the day, so it's time to go vote, as Deadpool over there is encouraging you to in celebration of his new series, where he meets Presidents of the past. If you don't know what to do or where to go, visit PresidentialElection.com for more information.

If you want up to the minute news on the results, you can check out the Election Pages for CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC, or for International sites, BBC, CTV and Al Jazeera.

If you've voted and are looking for something to do while waiting for the result to come in, The AV Club has assembled a list of politically-minded films ranging from the satirical to the serious, which can be viewed here.

And if you need even more information about the elections to help come to a decision, check this two react videos by The Fine Bros, or the special message from Will Ferrell at the bottom of the page.

And if you're just tired and want the election to be over, enjoy this comic from xkcd.

The Comic Portrayals of Barack Obama and other political comics

Ever since it was possible, Presidents and other political figures have been appearing in various media, from books to films to comics. Today I'm going to highlight some of their more recent and relevant appearances. Barack Obama has had numerous appearances in comics, due in part to his charisma, his celebrity, and being the first major African-American presidential candidate and President.

The first known appearance of Barack Obama in a comic book was in Licensable Bear TM #4 by Nat Gertler, released July 2007, where he appeared as a U.S. Senator during the Democratic Primaries. The comic only had a limited run of 1050 copies and has since become something of a collectors item.

The next comic, and first major one, to have an appearance by Obama was Savage Dragon #137 by Erik Larsen, which had an alternate cover showing The Savage Dragon endorsing Obama. The variant cover ended up selling out four print runs. Larsen's political opinion was already well known at the time, having been vocally opposed to George W Bush, going so far as to featured him as a villain in Savage Dragon #119, and has been a continued supporter of Obama since, including several more cameos in the following years.

IDW Publishing was not far behind, publishing biographical comic books of both Obama and his opponent John McCain a month before the election. Several other biographical comics of Obama followed as he advanced in the polls.










A few days before the election a senior staffer of Obama's revealed that Obama was big collector of Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comic books. When Marvel Comics learned of this they decided to included Obama in a Spider-Man comic, and published the story "Spidey Meets the President!", written by Mark Waid, in The Amazing Spider-Man No. 583 released January 2009. The issue proved extremely popular and sold out in a matter of minutes, and copies could be found on eBay going for $300 less than a day later.

During Obama's presidency several publishers released comics featuring Obama in an attempt to capitalize on his popularity, some of which were more notable than others. Bluewater Productions, whose recent production of a Romney/Obama biography was reported on a month ago, began releasing biographical comics about various political figures, including Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama. Devil's Due Publishing released Barack the Barbarian, a what-if story featuring American politicians in a Conan the Barbarian style world. For more comics featuring Barack Obama and related personalities, check out this Wikipedia article.






Mitt Romney hasn't appeared in any comics that I've been able to find outside of what I've already reported except for several appearances in Doonesbury, most notably with a story about Romney's time in France, which you can start reading here.




On the web, numerous webcomics have featured Obama, most notably Sinfest (above) where Obama is depicted as a hip man with quasi-mystical powers. Other webcomics that have had political and social jokes referencing the election include Diesel Sweeties (right), The Non-Adventures of Wonderella (below left) and Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (below right).

Presidential and Political, Memes and the Internet

Given the rise of the internet and social media's use in the past two Presidential Elections, especially by Obama, it's no surprise how many political memes have sprung up about the elections and the influence the internet has had on politics. Today I'll detail some of the more notable memes and incidents directly related to the elections. For more on these and other memes, check out KnowYourMeme.com.

2008 Political Memes
The first notable meme goes back to 2007 during the early part of the Democratic Primary when the satirical website Barely Political released the video Crush on Obama not long after he announced his bid for the presidency. The video gained Obama significant coverage and brought him to the forefront of the Primaries. The actress in the video, Amber Lee Ettinger, became known as Obama Girl and created more Obama Girl related stuff, including a website, ObamaGirl.com, and several other videos that garnered nearly as many views as the first video, in addition to numerous parodies by others. Obama Girl's popularity is often credited with giving Obama a significant boost in visibility during the primaries and may have been a major factor in him winning the Democratic Nomination.

As the Primaries finished, graphic designer and street artist Shepard Fairey created two posters of Obama, one first featuring the tagline "Progress" and the second "Hope". The second poster caught on, spreading virally over the internet after being digitized, becoming a major symbol for Obama's campaign and creating numerous parodies, which saw a revival in 2012 after a parody version with Republican Presidential Candidate Herman Cain was used on the Daily Show when they reported on Cain's sexual harassment lawsuits.


When Obama became the democratic candidates, the Birther Movement formed under the insistence that Obama wasn't born in the United States despite the evidence and demanded that he release his birth certificate. Soon numerous joke birth certificates started appearing online mocking the birthers, with some being mistaken as actual certificates proving Obama's foreign born status by birthers, resulting in further mockery of the movement.

After the 2008 Vice-Presidential Debate, several memes sprouted, the most notable being 4-Panel Comics featuring screen captures of Joe Biden and Sarah Palin from the debate, which started with a comic mocking Palin's debate abilities and Tina Fey's portrayal on Saturday Night Live (top left corner below) and gained considerable popularity after The Ginblog posted the article 15 Reasons Sarah Palin Will Never Win Any Argument featuring 15 of the more popular comics that had been created at the time. Many more comics were created, with most of them mocking Palin.

Numerous other political memes were created, most of which are sampled in the below video.



The Obama Presidency
Following Obama's victory, the right-wing tried to mobilize their base in protests against Obama using some of the still lingering misconceptions about him and the economic downturn created by the Bush Administration in the form of the Tea Party protests, and quickly made its presence known, both online and in real life. The party's over zealous nature, colorful characters and frequent misunderstanding of the facts lead to quick parodying on the internet, the most famous of which is Teabonics, drawing attention to the numerous misspellings and grammar mistakes on Tea Party signs and slogans like the one seen below.

When the Wall Street market crashed and significant corruption within it exposed, the Occupy movement quickly formed with the help Twitter and grew with as it spread on social media, eventually seeing protests the world over as it protested against the wealthy, dubbed the 1%, appropriating and mishandling money from everyone else, aka the 99%.


On May 1st, 2011, political staffers in Washington began excitedly tweeting that Osama bin Laden was dead, and the story was quickly picked up by numerous news agencies. Less than an hour later President Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed in a US military operation and the story soon spread around the world, with the various articles on the story reaching a combined peak of 4.1 million views per second the world over. During the events news of Osama's death set a new record for the “highest sustained rate of Tweets ever”. As the Whitehouse began distributing various images and information to the media several memes were created, most notable one of Obama and various officials watching the operation live in the White House's The Situation Room, which quickly became a favorite of photoshoppers as the original became the typical run photo for stories on Osama's death.

During all this, President Obama was trying to implement his Healthcare reform plan, aka Obamacare, which saw its own presence on the internet, both or and against. This all came to a head when several state lawsuits against Obamacare where merged and brought before the Supreme Court. A Republican attempt to gather digital signatures and print them out in real time for a video feed was quickly hijacked by trolls who began submitting false and irreverent names in the thousands before the plug was pulled on the project and coverage of the incident significantly hampered Republican efforts to continue. When the Supreme Court announced that Obamacare would remain largely intact, many celebrated with newly created meme images.




The Protect IP Act (PIPA) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) are a set of bills, for the U.S. Senate and House respectively, designed to provide the government and copyright holders with powers to block access to “rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods,” especially those registered outside the United States. Since they're introduction on May 11th, 2011, the proposed bills have been met by opposition from various digital rights activists and bloggers for their encroachment in online activities protected under the first amendment of free speech, broad and generalizing laws that would make the internet less secure and more vulnerable to attack if implemented and a clear lack of knowledge about how the internet works by the bills' creators and most vocal supporters. Public aware of the bills rose dramatically when congressional hearings for both bills began on November 16th. Originally the bills had significant support with the House and Senate from both parties, but as the public became more aware of the issues, thanks to protests against companies that supported the bill like website host GoDaddy.com, which lost over 70,000 domain site, and blackout campaigns that included sites like Google, Wikipedia and Reddit, and the revelation that congress men that supported the bills had little understanding of how both the internet and the bills functioned and had merely been acting on the instructions of the entertainment industry, public opinion of the bills became very negative and the majority of congressmen began opposing the bills, which have since been delayed indefinitely. The wide spread attention of the bills has significantly increased public and political awareness of the importance of internet freedom and other attempts to create internet censorship in the United States, which have a rise in scrutiny and failure.


The 2012 Republican Primaries
During the 2012 Republican Primaries several incidents and gaffes by candidates saw wide spread across the internet and became major memes, in part thanks to several new tools available on the internet, including every candidate having a twitter feed and Google launching a new Politics page that made it easier for people to get up to the minute news and track the candidates' popularity down to individual counties. As the Primaries started getting under way new data gather options and social media availability allowed people a better analyze candidate's public relations, cumulation when Tumblr released infographics showing common tags on Tumblr posts about each candidate as well as the number of posts mentioning the candidates since the start of the primaries, especially noting the rise in Rick Parry mentions after posts critical of and/or parodying his "Strong" ad, like the one below, went viral and caused his popularity to plummet. Michele Bachmann also saw considerable notoriety after an unpublished mockup of her on the cover of Newsweek leaked onto the internet that many say depicted her as being deranged, and many photoshoped images were created using the photo. A piece on the Daily Show featured the image and the various parodies drew considerable attention after pointing out that Bachmann should not be discriminated for her looks, but for her positions and proceeded to highlight numerous extremist views she held, which lost her considerable support.

The 2012 Presidential Election
The 2012 Presidential Election saw considerable internet involvement, with the new technological tools used in the Republican Primaries also used in the Presidential Election, while some site rolled out new features for the election, like YouTube's new Politics channel. Right off the bat when Romney's senior campaign adviser commented that Romney's national campaign was "like an Etch-A-Sketch" and everything he had said during the primaries could be ignored, which drew significant criticism. The comments created considerable buzz and numerous parodies featuring things like various drawing of Mitt Romney on an Etch-A-Sketch, Romney holding Etch-A-Sketchs during his campaign and even a popular twitter feed where Romney appropriated famous quotes. So much buzz was created that Ohio Art Co., the company that manufactures Etch-A-Sketches, saw their stock prices double and the company released aa series of ads to capitalize on the publicity.
During the election the Obama campaign released "The Life of Julia" website, designed to highlight the government assistance women would receive through out their life under the Obama administration through a series of slides. The site saw numerous parodies, made easy in part due to the site's simple and stylized graphics, ranging from real women's experiences through life, Conservative versions, extremely pessimistic versions, and depictions of other women in other times and places.
When the Romney campaign launched an iPhone app that allowed people to put various Republican slogans on their photos, it drew considerable media attention when it was revealed one of the slogans was misspelled, reading "A Better Amercia", which was quickly capitalized on by the internet with numerous parody photos.
During a campaign speech in Virginia, Obama began talking about the role of government in the lives of the people, he talked about how people didn't build things like roads and bridges, but needed those roads in order to function properly. However, do to poor wording the Republican party began broadcasting an ad featuring a small part of the speech, which implied that Obama was saying that small business owners didn't built their business themselves. Conservatives quickly capitalized on the key phrase "You didn't build that", creating numerous images and single issue blogs, but when the media began analyzing the full speech and the public became aware of the actual meaning of the phrase the meme quickly died off as backlashes against the conservatives grew.

In late September a video of Romney at a fundraiser in May showed him speaking about his belief that 47% of Americans “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them” that will never vote for him, and so he won't worry about them or try to court their vote. The video received enormous attention from both the media and the internet, where it was revealed that the 47% figure was taken from the number of people who don't pay federal income tax, and that these people didn't pay it because either they were underage, they or their spouse was an active duty soldier and thus exempt, or they didn't earn enough to be charged federal income tax, which meant they were living in poverty. Romney drew heavy criticism for the statement, and in his official response said that the comments were “not elegantly stated” but did not deny his belief in his statements nor apologized for them, which drew even further critisim.
During the First Presidential Debate, Romney made the comment that he would stop subsidies to PBS, despite his proclaimed love for Big Bird. Moments after saying that Twitter ignited with #FiredBigBird and #BigBirdRomney hash tags, and by the end of the debate #SaveBigBird had trended to number 4 and Reddit saw numerous images about the topic featuring numerous anti-Romney and pro-PBS slogans. The Obama campaign was able to take advantage of the bad publicity, highlighting Romney's desire to stop subsidies to PBS but deregulate Wall Street back to the same levels of the Bush Administration, while others pointed out that PBS' subsidies were a fraction of the subsidies that oil and gas companies get, despite their record profits larger than their subsidies, and that removing those subsidies first would have a much greater impact that PBS'.
In early October Romney began trying to backtrack from his previous 47% statement, calling it "completely wrong" whenever asked about it. The unfortunate side effect of this as the story spread was that when searching the phrase "Completely wrong", it would return links to official Romney material, and image search would be nothing but images of Romney. The phrase quickly trended to the third most searched phrase on Google which ended up bringing the 47% comment back into the news cycle.
Not long after, Time Magazine did a piece on Paul Ryan's workout routine, which had been the subject of much interest when it was reveal Ryan was a "Fitness Freak". In the piece were several staged shots of Ryan in his workout clothes using various weights, which were released online soon after. The photos' staged look and Ryan's overly involved look quickly drew attention, first with the creation of a Twitter feed by Ryan's Biceps and later with images featuring Mansplaining text about various topics like the economy and health care parody Ryan's nonspecific explanations and defensive answers during the campaign, which primarily come from the website Mansplaining Ryan, which continues to update.

During the Vice Presidential Debate, Joe Biden would constantly wear a smirk and chuckle before calling Ryan on a lie or misdirection, which turned out to be quite frequent during the debate, and images of him smirking quickly became known as Laughing Joe Biden and the media commented on how this seemed to unsettle Ryan, causing him to lose his focus towards the end and how much of a factor the laugh was in Ryan loosing the debate.
During the Second Presidential Debate, when asked about what he would about pay inequality, Mitt Romney recalled how when he was Governor he had gotten "Binders Full of Women" to hire to his staff in an effort to create gender equality in the government. The statement quickly went viral due to the absurdity of the literal meaning and the revelation that Romney had been given a binder full of resumes by the non-partisan women's group MassGAP before the election along with his opponent, and that Romney had nothing to do with the creation of "Binders Full of Women".
At the Third Presidential Debate, Romney criticized Obama's plan to reduce the size of the US Navy, asserting that there are currently less ships now that at the beginning of World War I. Obama rebutted that military might wasn't just measured by the number of ships but also the technological advances and capabilities those ships had, saying "Well Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets. We have these things called aircraft carriers and planes land on them. We have ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. It’s not a game of Battleship where we’re counting ships, it’s ‘What are our priorities?’” The line Horses and Bayonets quickly exploded on the internet, out pacing Romney's Binder line from the previous debate, topped Google's trend list of searches during the debate and became the most twitted line from the debate.
Since the entering the final stretch of the election many have been wondering if the internet would have any further impact on the race, including what impact any new GIFs will have.

2012 Election Final Stretch Blips

Today we've got some Final Stretch entries for the election.

• First off, the Huffington Post has a collection of the "best of" political late night talk show jokes, which can be viewed here. 
• Next, Comics Alliance has an interview with Ed Brubaker, the writer of Captain America for the past eight years, including Cap's death and the comic's return to political stories, as he departs from the comic, which can be read here. 
• Wired has a list of the Top 10 Fictional Characters that they'd like to see as president, which included Professor Charles Xavier, and can be read here. 
• China Daily has an interesting article on how campaigns figure out the best places to show ads, and can be read here. 
• And apparently Paul Ryan has been calling the brochure the Obama campaign has been producing detailing what he plans to do with a second term as a comic book, which you can read more about it here, see a video of Ryan talking about here, and the brochure in question can be downloaded here (pdf).

Next up is a (rather silly) video by JibJab of a Superhero Barack Obama. And finally is video from The Simpsons of Mr Burns Endorsing Mitt Romney

The Superheroes' Postions

And now, we have a roundup of who the superheroes were in favor of for each issue, where they gave a point for Obama, Romney or Undecided, and who each is voting for.

Superhero	Economy	Energy & Environment	Healthcare	Education	Equal Rights and Women's Health	Taxes and Budgets	National Security	Immigration	Housing	Science Debate Questions	Vote
Batman	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O
	"All men by nature seek knowledge. It's how that knowledge is used that's important, and it looks like Obama is the only one who desires to actually use it to improve America."
Captain America	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O
	"Romney's unabashed desire to not be responsible for helping despite wanting to be president is worrying. His plans to pass as much responsibility as possible onto other parties make me wonder what he thinks being president is all about."
Blue Beetle	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O
	"Romney's current platform sounds a lot like Obama's, but that wasn't Romney's first platform, and I wonder if Romney really means it."
Shadowcat	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O
	"When asked about how to improve education in America, Obama talks about how he's invested in programs to create more educated and better skilled teachers, while Romney attacks teachers unions, says parents need more choice in schools, and that the good should be rewarded, but nothing about improving what's broken, which makes it clear what's really broken with the system."
Hellboy	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O
	"You can't be afraid to spend money on things that'll help make the world a better place. Obama thinks that means people, while Romney thinks it means rich people. I think Obama has the right idea."
The Question	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O
	"Romney keeps saying he wants to make things easier for businesses or delegating things to the states, like he doesn't want to understand how or why these things works."
Spider-Girl	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O
	"Nobody should suffer because we failed to help when we should have. Obama is seeking to help as many as he can, while Romney clearly doesn't care for women, the non-rich and non-whites"
Plastic Man	U	O	O	O	O	U	U	O	O	U	O
	"Speaking from experience, if more people were willing to help one another when they're in need, we'd have a lot less villains out there. That's why I like Obama, since that's what his plan is."
Aunt May	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O
	"Romney's attempt to criticize Obama for the diversity of his federal technology investments is odd. Didn't he learn not to put all his eggs in one basket through all his business experience?".
Gran'ma Ben	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O
	"I've learned the hard way you can't go giving some people special treatment. You have to treat everyone equally, or things will go badly for everyone. Given Romney's desire to treat some people special, and Obama's efforts to treat people fair, the decision isn't hard."
Mr. Incredible	O	O	O	O	O	O	R	O	O	O	O
	"Mr. Romney, seems to keep saying we shouldn't help certain people. We're suppose to help people! Don't you believe in things like Help thy Neighbor Romney?"
Dr. Deseret	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O
	" Romney doesn't seem to believe very much in his Mormon faith, since so many of policies contradict our most basic beliefs."
Crimson Avenger	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O
	"Mitt Romney's desire to return pre-existing conditions barriers to healthcare and deny life saving treatments to anyone is downright criminal."
Big Bertha	O	U	O	O	O	O	O	O	U	O	O
	"Sometimes you have to be the one to support others if you want thinks to get better. Obama's efforts to support every American equally are the right action."
Linda Park-West	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O
	"Romney doesn't want to talk about these issues? Then I don't want to talk about him."
The Savage Dragon	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O
	"I'll support anything that helps save lives and reduce the burden on the average citizen, which is exactly what Obama's plan is going to do."
Tigra	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O
	"Romney's belief that whatever he does is innovative, and the fact that he changes stance within the same paragraph in his answers, convinces me that Romney is saying whatever he thinks sounds good."
Green Lantern	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O
	"If we want to go further than those before us, we have to know more than them, and the only way that'll happen is if we keep investing in spreading our knowledge around."
Luke Cage	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O
	"Romney seems to want to set things back to the way they were under Bush. I don't see any good coming from that."
Superman	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O
	"Every day I hear all the languages of the world. And no matter language they speak, I help where I can, because even if they're from different lands doesn't mean they have different rights. Romney's desire to give priority to some over others isn't by any means fair."
Total
Obama/Biden	19	19	20	20	20	19	18	20	19	19	20
Undecided	1	1	0	0	0	1	1	0	1	1	0
Romney/Ryan	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0

Conclusion
And with that, Obama takes all of the superhero vote. That's not to surprising, given the way things were playing out and their liberal creations and clear liberal bias. But that doesn't change the valid points that were brought up about both candidate's campaigns. I hope anyone reading this will take all the information brought up into account when deciding who to vote for this Tuesday.

~James