The momentum behind president-elect Barack Obama’s comic connection appears to be building, with a Quesada appearance on the The Colbert Report and the first report of a positive sales impact. Obama first revealed his comic tastes in Entertainment Weekly in August, when he said that Spider-Man was his favorite comic character because he’d been “knocked around a little bit.” And last week, in a list of "The 50 facts you might not know" about Obama, the Telegraph reported that he collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics.
On Thursday, the The Colbert Report's Stephen Colbert, who appeared as a presidential candidate in Amazing Spider-Man #573 (see “Colbert in Special Spider-Man Story”), used Obama’s comic tastes and his own appearance in Spider-Man as both comedic fodder and as bait for an Obama appearance on his show. Ruing his loss of the election to Obama, Colbert said his research had turned up the fact that Obama collects Spider-Man and Conan comics, and pointed out that “we just elected a man who has known associations with a barbarian.” Colbert continued, “It turns out Barack Obama’s not a secret Muslim, he’s something much worse--a secret nerd.”
And we also were interested to see a report in Saturday’s Financial Post of a big impact on Spider-Man sales at a comic store in
Although former president Clinton claimed comic distribution as one of his youthful careers, we don’t recall hearing about specific titles, or any adult interest. So with Obama headed for the White House, we may be witnessing the first geek presidency. He’ll certainly need some diversion from the problems he’ll be facing when he takes office, and what could be better than reading a few comics, or perhaps a weekly D&D game in the Situation Room.
