Jan
8
Spider-Man vs. Obama
Filed Under Comics
I keep hoping the term “shout-out” will soon no longer be part of our cultural lexicon, and people will stop talking like fourteen-year-olds who read at a third-grade level. Speaking of reading at a third-grade level — and hope for that matter — Marvel Comics has announced that President-elect Barack Obama will appear in an upcoming issue of “The Amazing Spider-Man,” according to Huffington Post.
Joe Quesada, the Editor-in-Chief at Marvel, wants to give Obama a “shout-out back” for having been a fan of Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian(!) as a child. Unfortunately, this homage — or “shout-out” in French — sounds like the worst idea to come down the pike since last year’s “Brand New Day,” which retconned Spidey’s marriage to Mary Jane. The back-up story will have Spider-Man discover there are two Obamas, one for each America perhaps, and have to determine who’s the real and who’s the fake with a game of basketball. I assume the phony Obama is the Chameleon of a shape-shifting Skrull in disguise. The whole thing sounds kind of racist to me.
At any rate, I don’t often like when comic books directly address current events. It dates the material for one thing, and for another, it’s never handled very well. A recent issue of “Amazing Spider-Man” centered around Peter Parker’s former high school rival Flash Thompson and how he’d lost his legs in Iraq. It was kind of offensive, given that it’s a comic book, and tonally inconsistent with the current storyline.
Science fiction should metaphorically tap into our culture and reflect what’s going on through a prism of fantasy. Shoehorning Obama, Iraq and even 9/11 into a Spidey book is just feels forced. It’s not change I can believe in.
-Brad Lohan
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