So what’s occurring right here? Our guess is the insistence of the above-mentioned cynical level is ruining this trope. The very fact is that placing symbols of idealized good like superheroes in the identical tales as presidents is certainly organising a battle that can’t probably age nicely except you really settle for the associated fee and go along with it — like Frank Miller’s The Darkish Knight Returns having Reagan deal with Superman like a just-following-orders goon, or Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Graphic Novel With No Zack Snyder Film being set in a proto-corporate dystopia with Nixon as a perpetual US president. These works get it, man. However commonplace superhero fare can’t assist falling into the lure of treating presidents like both pure, sincere public servants or narcissistic plutocrats who’re essentially put within the place of subordinating the hope for change to the whims of the wealthy.
On this regard, there may be one comedian that brings us full circle; insofar it’s the most completely paradigmatic instance of this complete drawback, with out even realizing it. Again in 2009, per week earlier than Obama’s real-life inauguration, Marvel revealed a brief backup characteristic wherein Spidey saves the day throughout a fictional model of mentioned occasion Earlier than that, Biden had helped a kidnapped Obama, McCain had helped Peter Parker, all moments inside the story selling wholesome, politically-mature bipartisanship, which is as real looking as radioactive spider powers. But the important thing level in all of that is the villain of the characteristic: the Chameleon. A shapeshifter. Yeah, we all know you already know the place we’re going: it’s structural evaluation time, child!
Marvel Comics
