We trust that readers will be very familiar with the expression Michelle has adopted here.

Poor Bluewater…bad timing.

UPDATE: Bluewater has released a statement:

The country is a lesser place with the passing of Senator Kennedy. Regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum we could all learn a great deal if we followed his passion for public service.
 
The timing of our announcement of a biography comic based on the life of Ted Kennedy was in no way tied to the Senator’s declining health and ultimate passing. When Bluewater planned out the first year of biographies, Kennedy’s name was always at the top of the list. In fact, this issue has been in production since March and was solicited to retail shops through our national distributor in June. We will, of course, pay final respects to this American icon by adding a page to the completed issue to close the last chapter of his remarkable life.
 
We mourn his passing with the rest of the nation.

One fewer cartoonist is (potentially) gainfully employed today, after the Senate questioned a Treasury plan to hire a cartoonist. The Treasury’s Bureau of Public Debt hoped that witty cartoons and seminars on humor would cheer up their workers, who are toiling to oversee the nations $1.2 trillion debt.

“Our training staff felt that at a time when employees are working extra hours, it might have been helpful,” said Kim Treat, a spokesman for the bureau.

But the effort was canceled because it had become “more of a distraction than an opportunity,” he said.

The plan was scuttled when the office of Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D. questioned the move, Dorgan wrote, in part, “Of all the agencies, the Bureau of Public Debt should know that there is very little that is funny about today’s economic conditions.”

Truly debt is no laughing matter and we must turn back to the private sector to find jobs for the nation’s ink slingers.

(Caricature of Dornan by Kerry Waghorn.)

NOTE: Eagle-eyed Steven Stahl points out the nation’s debt is actually $11.66 trillion. The $1.2 trillion figure is from the AP.

…The Joker was an Anarchist, not a Socialist, as all you people who went to see THE DARK KNIGHT 13 times know.

Splash Page has more.

How did Bluewater miss this? A Minnesota-based group is putting out a comic based on “colorful” US Rep. Michele Bachmann:

FALSE WITNESS! THE MICHELE BACHMANN STORY is the thrilling, behind the scenes look at the seedy, hairy, loathsome underbelly of the career of of one of America’s most notorious right-wing nuts and demagogues! This is that one that TELLS IT ALL–it leaves NOTHING TO THE IMAGINATION! It’s all there, the global conspiracy to end American freedom, the apocalyptic last days of human kind, the lesbians in the bathroom, the threats, the vengeance, the Bush-kissing, the sordid lies, Satan, Jesus Christ, the flying imams–

Bachmann is known for her wacky statements, and the comic will be taken from her actual quotes, according to TPM:

Dump Bachmann contributor Bill Prendergast teamed up with local cartoonists in Minnesota to write an illustrated history of Bachmann’s career — with her dialogue all culled from actual media appearances, such as her call for revolution against President Obama, or her request for the media to investigate Congress for anti-American views.

§ Bluewater is mining the current popularity of political topics for all it’s worth, and will soon tell the inspiring story of the White House Dog Bo, from his early days as a puppy organizer to his run for the dog house.

§
§ And thus, an entire year’s worth of Marvel crossovers were strangled in their crib.

§ President Barrrrrrack Obama discusses naval maneuvers around the Barrrrrrrrbary Coast.

We meant to comment on this piece by Lucas Siegel from Blog@Newsarama for days, but never got around to it; the title was “My Opinion Is Right: Comics Press is Crippled Like No Other Industry” but despite that bold statement, the offending incident came from Marvel’s very active staff Twitter community

There has been a bit of an uproar on Twitter in the last 24 hours, primarily instigated by three big names at Marvel Comics complaining about tweets, posts on the microblogging social network, being reposted on websites such as this one, CBR, and many others. The contention by Tom Brevoort, Brian Michael Bendis, and Joe Quesada is that this shouldn’t be done without permission or even payment to the person who made the original 140 character or less post.

This was really a tempest in a teapot — Joe Q, in particular complaining about people reposting his Tweets — let alone PAYING to do it — was odd, since he’s one of the most media-savvy comics personalities out there. It seems that the agita — if it wasn’t all a big put-on — on Marvel’s part was over Twitter aggregations like this gathering up CB Cebulski’s advice on how to break into comics.

Setting aside the fact that apparently Cebulski actually GAVE permission for Blog@ to collect his thoughts, the main thing it made US wonder was…why on earth would ANYONE post any information of any real value on Twitter?

As our colleague Calvin Reid observed to us the other night, Twitter is like a 24-hour rolling cocktail party. There really isn’t enough time in the day to read EVERY Twitter in your feed, and why would anyone want to? CB went to the trouble of typing out some very sound information on breaking in to comics — and then it rolled on. Back to CB’s daily culinary adventures, Wil Wheaton’s making dinner for his kids, Themediaisdying posting about some magazine closing, Wossy making a TV show, and a thousand complaints about computer problems.

Has Twitter crested yet, please God? Well, Techcrunch reports the dual assault of Ashton Kutcher and Oprah has overrun the levees:

Twitter’s march towards world domination continues apace. This morning comScore released its global numbers for March, 2009. Worldwide visitors to Twitter.com increased 95 percent in the month of March from 9.8 million to 19.1 million, according to its estimates. This compares to 9.3 million visitors in the U.S. alone.

What really amuses us is the Internet’s supposed “march of progress”. Six or seven years ago, when blogging was just getting started, we remember countless web articles on how you needed to blog to extend and market your brand. Now we are reading countless blogs about how to use Twitter to extend and market your brand. What’s next? We predict some kind of rolling symbol site — like in the Matrix — where folks just type in little pictures to say how they’re feeling — the bad news is that everyone will need a Chinese computer keyboard to participate.

And what’s a “brand” anyway? Is it the same thing as, gasp, content?

The Twitter fad is notable in that everyone PREDICTS it’s a fad and not a new means of communication, even while they’re trying to make use of this new means of communication. What really worries us is that so much on the web is far less lasting than that moldy, uninteractive print. In its own way the closing of GeoCities is a massive loss of information. If you want to see the Web as it existed ten years ago just find any webpage hosted on GeoCities. And yet, these were mostly pages written by people who were driven by passion. They were also trailblazers of web info, scanning and writing and posting information that has since been disseminated in Wikipedia and the other pro sites that come up whenever you Google anything. They were the frigging pioneers!

Yahoo is closing it GeoCities site this year.

Yahoo bought GeoCities for more than $2.9 billion in dot-com-priced stock in 1999, when GeoCities had more than 1.1 million users. However, while the idea of having a personal presence on the Internet has caught on, GeoCities turned out to be a backwater, not the mainstream.

“We will be closing GeoCities later this year,” Yahoo said in a note on the site. “We’ll provide more details about closing GeoCities and how to save your site data this summer.”

For perspective, Harry McCracken does a “Where are they now” for the top 15 websites and brands of April, 1999 and it’s not pretty.

And now, it looks like the entire publishing world might go the way of GeoCities.
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As the most powerful political leaders on earth gathered at a G20 dinner on Wednesday, they still flocked like groupies around JK Rowling:

The President made a beeline for Miss Rowling, at the end of the Downing Street G20 dinner, and told her that he had read all her books himself and to his children Sasha and Malia.

Miss Rowling then received a second presidential seal of approval for the boy wizard from Russia’s President Medvedev and his wife Svetlana, who not only admitted to having read the Harry Potter books but also asked for her autograph.

However, even The Queen of all She Surveys, great and terrible, must yield to an even greater power: the Telegraph notes that Rowling wore “a pale pink shift dress.”

Since Barack Obama is to 2009 comics what foil variants were to 1993 comics and black and white parodies were to 1988 comics, it is natural that more and more companies should jump on the bandwagon, like Devil’s Due with Barack the Barbarian, an ongoing parody written by Larry Hama. The artist is not named.

BARACK THE BARBARIAN: QUEST FOR THE TREASURE OF STIMULI

Larry Hama (G.I. Joe, Wolverine) take political satire to a whole new level. Hama, a surprise hire to some, but not to those who truly know his tastes, will take a look at the current state of politics both past and present and isn’t afraid to point fun at Washinton’s sacred cows. In the distant future the story of Barack Obama has become a little… distorted. According to THE MADDOWIAN CHRONICLES he was the one destined to save the great republic of America and dethrone the overpaid despots of the time. Join Barack, Sorceress Hilaria, her demi-god trickster husband Biil, Overlord Boosh and Chainknee of the Elephant Kingdom. Who can the lone barbarian trust, if anyone?

Although Dick Cheney makes a great Thulsa Doom, we can only quote the Geico gecko…”Oh, dear.”

Is Barack Obama funny? Dean Trippe and Evan Bryce are going to find out as they launch a new webcomic entitled PRESIDENT AWESOME.

President Awesome has officially taken office! Welcome to the new administration. This weekly series will faithfully satirize the 44th President of the United States as he preserves, protects, and defends the Constitution of the United States to the best of his ability.

President Awesome is a weekly political comic about President Barack Obama! Basically, it’s The Daily Show meets The Far Side, but you know, way better.

Two digital comics from Dan Goldman today: YES WE WILL, which imagines the end of Obama’s first term in 2012.

PLUS an excerpt from 08: A GRAPHIC DIARY OF THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL by Michael Crowley and Goldman at The Daily Beast.

Over at his blog, Kyle Baker announces his own Obama comic is in the works from HarperCollins:

My publisher told me to stop work on my Toussaint biography and make a comic about our new president. We know there are already Obama comics out there, but trust us. This book will be a totally different take on the material. This is just a quick rough sketch. I’m still working out the story.

The other day, we approvingly noted how much international press this week’s Spider-Man/Barack Obama team-up comic had gotten. Tons of press, appearances on everything from Drudge to CNN to Rachel Maddow, it’s all good, right?

Well, you’d think so, except that Marvel’s ordering policies on the book have retailers complaining that they won’t have enough to meet all the interest drummed up by the publicity. For a short version, here’s someone named “Williams” in a Comics Should Be Good! comment thread:

Oh what the heck I’ll tell you myself: Ordering an amount of Amazing Spiderman #583 equal to or greater than total pre-orders for Amazing Spiderman #575 qualified retailers to order the Obama cover of #583. Sales for Amazing Spiderman #583 would have been down from #575 (an anniversary issue to boot) so this created a situation where dealers were FORCED to buy unsalable product so that they could then spend more mioney to get quantities of the Obama cover. This, in turn, makes the regular cover version less salable than it would have been. This is is a waste of paper and money not to mention usurious behavior on someone’s (either Marvel or Diamond Distribution) part. Comic companies and distributors should not be in the business of manipulating the collectibles market. Remember: these are “dated periodicals.”

Brian Cronin stepped in to chide Williams for being a Debbie Downer, but other retailers shared some of his ire. The announcement of the Obama story went out in a fairly little noticed Marvel retailer mailing, and many were simply caught short or didn’t want to order extra copies of the “non variant” cover edition, fearing they’d be stuck.

With the flood of attention, however, Marvel must have realized that this could be another blockbuster issue and quickly announced a second printing, according to a Diamond alert:

To meet expected demand for this momentous issue, Marvel has now announced it’s heading back to press to offer the Amazing Spider-Man #583 Obama Second Printing Variant (NOV088096D), featuring a re-colored version of the original Obama variant cover drawn by Phil Jimenez.

This variant carries an FOC date of today, January 12, and is expected to ship on January 21. No order qualifiers apply, allowing retailers to order as many copies of this variant as they wish while supplies last.

This isn’t the first time that Marvel has had a hot ticket comic available in limited supplies due to retailers. Remember CAP #25? And it is undoubtedly true that many retailers like to complain about a thing, even as they are selling that thing in hotcake-like quantities. At the end of the day, the entire kerfuffle seems to have pointed up all the torsions in the direct sales market pipeline: Marvel’s usual method of an “ordering incentive” backfires when the item unexpectedly catches the eye of the “civilian” world, and retailers, already pressed to pay attention to countless “Trust us, it’ll be big!” promises, fail to note something that really can be big.

While it’s tempting to chalk the whole thing up to a lack of product confidence or trust at many levels, hopefully Obama won’t be caught receiving any special attention from an intern by his second day in office, he’ll remain popular, the second printing will arrive and many copies will be sold at cover price.

Ebay speculators are already more hopeful. We’ll see how that works out.

Thank God, a NEW controversy! Last week, Bill Willingham penned a piece for Big Hollywood, a newish website dedicated to presenting a more conservative view of the entertainment industry. The piece was entitled: Superheroes: Still Plenty of Super, But Losing Some of the Hero. While admitting his own part in superhero deconstruction back in the day with THE ELEMENTALS (remember Willingham’s fine art for that series?), he feels the right way to go is with a more heroic model of the superhero:

Borrowing some wisdom from the famous parable of the mote in one fellow’s eye, and the whole beam in another’s, it would be the height of hypocrisy for me to make any call for our industry to clean up its act, until I’ve first cleaned up my own. I’ve already made some progress down that road. In my run writing the Robin series (of Batman fame), I made sure both Batman and Robin were portrayed as good, steadfast heroes, with unshakable personal codes and a firm grasp of their mission. I even got to do a story where Robin parachuted into Afghanistan with a group of very patriotic military superheroes on a full-scale, C130 gunship-supported combat mission. And in my short run on the Shadowpact series I kept to the same standard (but with less success as several story details were editorially imposed).

But ’some’ progress isn’t enough. It’s time to make public a decision I’ve already made in private. I’m going to shamelessly steal a line from Rush Limbaugh, who said, concerning a different matter, “Go ahead and have your recession if you insist, but you’ll have to pardon me if I choose not to participate.” And from now on that’s my position on superhero comics. Go ahead and have your Age of Superhero Decadence, if you insist, but you’ll have to pardon me if I no longer choose to participate.

The post brings about a pretty healthy response, but nothing like the comments section at Robot 6 which erupts into an all-out culture war that we hardly dared wade into, although Kurt Busiek seemed all too eager.

After reading the piece, we got the impression that Willingham, being one of the better “Big Two” comics writers out there, is still more interested in telling good stories than trying to serve some absolutist political viewpoint. Or maybe he’s just on the cutting edge, because “grim and gritty” is getting old. Apparently Willingham will be a regular at the site — can you say, boon to blog-kind?

Where there’s a female pol — or in this case a potential female pol — there’s Bluewater Comics’ Female Force series, as they have announced a Caroline Kennedy comic to follow up their Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama comics. Prescient Bluewater had decided to cover Kennedy before she became a front runner to fill Clinton’s now vacant New York Senate seat.

Bluewater chose Kennedy as its next comic book subject before the news broke of her interest in New York politics. “She was on the short list before all the hype about the Senate seat. She is an amazing person who has done a lot for education,” said publisher Darren G. Davis.

“I hope readers enjoy my rendition of one of the most influential families in political history,” said artist Vinnie Tartamella.

Hopefully Female Force will start covering political women from around the world. Maybe a Angela Merkel or Somaly Mam comic will be next!

A Reuters story about the issue of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, with Barack Obama guest starring has been printed everywhere,. In our news feed it showed up all over the US, in Australia, India, Ghana, New Zealand, you name it. It was even on the front page of the Drudge Report:

Marvel editor in chief Joe Quesada said the idea for the “Spidey meets the President!” edition came from a statement from Obama’s campaign listing 10 little known facts about the Democrat who will be America’s first black president.

“Right at the top of that list was he collected Spider-Man comics,” Quesada told Reuters in an interview on Thursday.

“I was inundated with tons of fan mail saying ‘Have you read this?’” Quesada said. “I was just floored, absolutely floored, to find out that the future commander-in-chief was actually going to be the future nerd-in-chief.”

What’s notable about all this is that we now take this kind of media saturation for comic book stories for granted. It started five or six years ago — remember the gay Rawhide Kid? Or the gay Batwoman? Or the death of Captain America? The first few times one of these stories exploded, it seemed miraculous to longtime comic book watchers. Now, it’s ho hum, another media stunt.

We remember when this kind of coverage for ANY comic book story would have resulted in everyone in comics doing the happy dance, thinking “Now we’ve arrived!” It seems we arrived a long time ago now. We also recall (showing age now) how comics retailers, publishers and other think tankers long dreamed of forming a “Milk Board” for comics that would advertise how famous people read comics and it was okay.

Who needs a Milk Board when you have celebrities, pseudo-celebrities and politicians (like…uh, POTUS) casually proclaiming their love for comics. Sometimes they even have to explain why they DON’T read comics, as if it were something to be ashamed of.

Nutty, huh?

We may be standing on the brink of dark times now, but to you, my fellow comics travelers, I say, sometimes it’s important to take a moment to look at how far we’ve come. When you see how much road is behind us, it makes the road ahead look a lot better, doesn’t it?

Dan Goldman has a 20 page excerpt of his 08: A Graphic Diary of the Campaign Trail posted at his website. Relive the thrilling days of summer!

Daily Kos analyzes an old propaganda comic.

Both Dan DiDio and Joe Quesada answered readers’ questions this week, at Newsarama and Myspace, respectively. A key difference between DC and Marvel emerged:

“I don’t want to timestamp something, say, having an issue of Superman where we show the Phillies wining the World Series.”

-Dan Didio, at Newsarama

“Obama will be no different than prior presidents. If a given Marvel story calls for us to see the President of the United States, then Barack Obama will be the guy you see.”

-Joe Quesada, at Myspace

DC’s approach will likely result in more “timeless” comics, but there is something to be said for Marvel’s gleeful embrace of current affairs. We like to imagine a young comics fan twenty years from now, stumbling upon an Obama appearance in SECRET INVASION and rushing to whatever they will call blogs in the future to post about how weird and wacky comics were “back in the day.”

After the break: DiDio and Quesada discuss the difficulties in orchestrating all the pieces of an interconnected superhero universe.
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“We have a President-Elect who’s a Spider-Man fan! It’s like I’ve been saying for years, people who grew up reading comics are moving into positions of power in media, in business, and now in the Executive Branch of the federal government. Is that cool or what? I don’t know about you, but I’m very happy that the next President of the United States knows that ‘in this world, with great power there must also come — great responsibility!’”

- Comics scribe Roger Stern, from an interview with Zack Smith at Newsarama.

…

“I arrived in America [in August 1992] shortly before Bill Clinton was elected and I watched the joy that my friends had when he was elected, and then I watched six months later as that joy turned to grumbliness when they realized they elected a politician. I had a thought that I would write them the kind of president they obviously seemed to want, and I got to do it by grabbing an old, forgotten DC Comics character called Prez, the “first teen president of the United States,” and it was so much fun.”

-SANDMAN creator Neil Gaiman, from a retrospective interview at the L.A. Times’s Hero Complex blog. Love that word “grumbliness!” And the Silver Age Prez (created by Captain America co-creator Joe Simon) is a true riot:

Whether that chapter of SANDMAN will strike the same chords in 2009 remains to be seen, but earlier in the interview, Gaiman reminds us how much has changed in the world of comics since 1992:

“For example: Graphic novels these days, the collections of comics tends to harbor around eight issues. That was something that began really with “The Sandman” No. 1. When I explain to people that the reason that the first story, “Preludes and Nocturnes” was eight issues long was because back in those days DC Comics didn’t like canceling things before they gave them a year because it made them look bad. So they used to give things a year — which meant that I was pretty sure that I would be getting my phone call at issue eight letting me know, “No, we aren’t going to be doing this, the book is canceled.”"

Posted by Aaron Humphrey

The nerd percentage of President-elect Barack Obama continues to fire the imaginations of comics enthusiasts everywhere, even though, as pointed out in the Beat comment section by junior reporter Darren Hudak, Obama is far from the first comics-loving president.

Reagan’s favorate comic strip was Spider-Man, believe it or not, he said in more then one interview that the first thing he did in the morning was read that days installment of Spidey, he even wrote Stan a fan letter, (how frigging cool is that), Stan mentioned it in an interview sometime in the 80’s. No word on wheter he ever read the comics.

FDR was also a fan of the comics, there are pictures of him reading comic strips to kids, and one picture of him holding a Superman comic with a big smile on his face. A famous story has FDR calling a newspaper to find out how Dick Tracy was going to escape from the bad guys latest and greatest deathtrap because he simply couldn’t wait till the next installment. (Talk about being a fanboy).

There you go, the two greatest presidents of the last century, both COMICS NERDS. Far from adding to an image as a mouth-breaking, anorak-wearing loser, the idea of reading comics has been a great leveler for the men in the White House — evidently sharing the concerns of common folk just like real peeps is a political plus. So maybe we will hear Obama talk about the Superman soon.

Anyway, in addition to his verified comic book reading past, the leftie Obama (left-HANDED) also likes to doodle. One man purchased this senatorial scribble at a charity auction:

Some intense bidding drove the final price up to $2,075, and Berzon later learned he had been bidding against television actress Gillian Anderson of “The X Files,” whose family is deeply involved with the charity.

But Berzon said he figured he still had a bargain in securing the doodle of the announced presidential contender.

Just to complete the “Is Obama a nerd?” news cycle for the day, here’s some picture of Obama posing with the now-iconic Alex Ross T-shirt, which we nicked from Lee Hester’s email newsletter.

This 50 facts about Obama article has spurred considerable hopes that the incoming US president might, at last, be the one to truly represent a long-oppressed minority in the White House. Eight simple words that spell hope for the world:

He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics.

Note the use of the present tense. While it’s a well known fact that young Barack was an avid comic book reader, and certainly no stranger to superhero imagery on the campaign trail, this one verb would have us believe that he still keeps a long box, or perhaps some trendy graphic novels, in his reading pile. Something like, CONAN: BORN ON THE BATTLEFIELD by Kurt Busiek and Greg Ruth, maybe? Or maybe he’s more of a Bendis fan?

We’ll leave the parsing of this particular truth to others. What with administrative transitions, and global recession and nukes in Iran, he’s got a lot on his plate, and to expect him to weigh in on the Clone Saga is just a bit much. Frankly we found this factoid just as interesting.

He has read every Harry Potter book

Maybe the president-elect is just, you know, kind of a nerd.

Developing?

In their most lucid press release yet, Bluewater announced that First Lady-elect Michelle Obama would be joining Sen. Hillary Clinton and Gov. Sarah Palin as the subject of her very own biographical comic book!

The life of America’s future first lady, Michelle Obama, will be the subject of the latest chapter of Bluewater Productions’ ongoing “Female Force” comic series. The book will follow Obama, a Princeton- and Harvard-educated lawyer, from her youth on the South Side of Chicago to her community, civic service and private-sector career successes through the 2008 presidential campaign and election day. The book is scheduled for release in April 2009.

“Mrs. Obama is a dynamic force and one of the most influential women in the world,” said Bluewater Productions President Darren G. Davis. “Her potential influence on future policy decisions makes her a fascinating figure to feature.”

“In creating an image of our new first lady, Michelle Obama, it was my goal to represent her class, beauty and intelligence,” said artist Vinnie Tartamella. “I hope I reflected these qualities and characteristics in this historical piece. I’m truly honored to have been asked to create this.”

Dan Goldman unveils the cover of this comics version of the making of the president.

Morning in America.