Badass Presidents doing Badass Things and Some of the Most Memerable Fictional Presidents

In celebration of the election finally being over and the process going relatively smoothly, I'd like to first point out a series art piece by SharpWriter featuring various Presidents doing bad-ass things, like a mecha FDR, alien hunter JFK, and zombie fighter George Washington to the right there.

And if you're unhappy with the results, you can take solace that we didn't end up with one of the crazier presidents from comics in this list from ComicBookResources, or maybe one of the various presidents from science fiction from this list from io9.

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).

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

Co-operative Movement Comic Book, Breast Cancer Awareness Covers and Why Democracy Matters

First up today, we have a story about a new comic book detailing the history of the co-operative movement and it's impact on American history, which can be read here.

 

Next we have a gallery of all the Pink Variant covers Marvel released in October in support of Breast Cancer, which can be viewed here.










And finally, we have a TEDTalk by British MP Rory Stewart on why democracy matters, the international impact of it and his efforts to help Middle East countries set up their own democracies.

Joss Whedon "endorses" Romney, xkcd's Balance of Congress and a superheroes' call to vote

Joss Whedon, writer/director for The Avengers and The Avengers 2 and overseeing the spin-off TV show S.H.E.I.L.D., in addition to numerous other genre projects, has released a video in which he "endorses" Mitt Romney for some... interesting reasons.




 xkcd has a new comic examining the balance of the United States Congress going all the way back to the beginning, and has several interesting tidbits with in. The enlarger version can be read here.

And finally we have a superhero's call to vote. The much longer full comic can be read here.

xkcd's Electoral Precedents

The always interesting xkcd.com has a comic detailing the problems of predicting elections on some not very relevant circumstances, using every United States Presidential Election.