Let me just start this off by saying I do think the new Spider-Man comic book in which he prevents a villain from interrupting Barack Obama's inauguration looks generally corny and all-around awful. (Though the joke about Spider-Man having previously mistaken Joe Biden for the Vulture, one of his enemies, isn't half bad.)
That said, though, it's also true that right-wing blogger Debbie Schlussel may have gone just a wee bit overboard in attacking the comic in a post published on Andrew Breitbart's new site Big Hollywood. Some of the choicer bits:
Once, comic books were against Nazis and Hitler and were very up front in supporting America’s fight against them. But those days are over. Both DC and Marvel Comics long ago embraced left-wing politics, and when it came to the war on terror, they were for the most part silent ...
Now, though, comic books are back to supporting the President, since he embodies their far-left ideology. Yup, Spider-Man is in the tank for Obama and lets us know, telling us he’s left Washington “in capable hands ..."
I’m just wondering: When Obama goes to share some baklava with his new friend Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or his buds in HAMAS [sic], will we see Spidey cheering that on, too, and, again, tell America’s comic book readers we’re in “capable hands”?
Boy, I long for the days of Superman, Sgt. Fury, and other comic book superheroes fighting the Nazis ... not sitting down to talk and eat wienerschnitzel with them or praising Presidents who want to do just that ... So sad that these days, the superheroes’ objective is girlie-man foreign policy.
The irony, a friend who knows about these things pointed out, is that Marvel has done pro-war comics. In fact, back in 2004 they hired a guy named Karl Zinsmeister to write a whole series about the war in Iraq. You may recognize Zinsmeister's name, actually -- he went on to become President Bush's chief domestic policy advisor.
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