Barack the Barbarian comic book from Devils Due

This sounds like it should be available in artist’s alley, photocopied and stapled, not available from Devil’s Due, an impressive company that has published the likes of G.I. Joe and Army of Darkness!  I’ve read such comics before, such as Rushman and Goretopia, and while entertaining they weren’t really mainstream rack-worthy.   That comic where Sean Hannity is a terrorist-fighter in the future sounded pretty far out, too.  I hope my meh-ing of comics whose message I would absolutely agree with makes it clear, this isn’t purely partisan.  I just think it’s absurd that a political screed is getting published at a level beyond that of Kinko’s.

“Join Barack, Sorceress Hilaria, her demigod trickster husband, Biil, Overlord Boosh and Chainknee of the Elephant Kingdom,” a promo from Devil’s Due Publishing teases.

“Bush, Cheney, McCain, Blago, Pelosi, Steele — they are all in there,” said Josh Blaylock, the Chicago-based publisher’s president.

Unmentioned in the article is that that looks like Ann Coulter on the cover.

And here’s Sarah Palin in a warrior bikini (this is the original post I read; hat tip also to IMAO).

How WEIRD is it to do a comic book about this?  And not in an election year, but as his administration is just getting off the ground.  I mean, the Democrats control EVERYTHING, and Barack doesn’t fight for anything, he rules from high atop a big pile of IOUs, but a big name second-tier comic company publishes a comic about his taking on his defeated, out-of-power political opponents (and apparently even commentators who god forbid should say anything against him) as an ass-kicking barbarian.

I can’t imagine a comic company doing this for any other president.  I’m not talking Z-grade stuff like “Reagan’s Raiders” (thanks for the info, Suedenim); this is a very well-known publisher.

Granted, comics have always been partisan.  Always.  It may have been more subtle in the 1980s, such as Nancy Reagan being a Manhunter or the “Reagan-Bush” memorial in Gilgamesh II being a gigantic stone dollar sign… sorry, I meant to say “subtle as a sledgehammer”…but even so, these were diversions.   There may be swipes at Reagan in “The Dark Knight Returns”, but that isn’t the point of the book.   Nobody ever published a book aimed solely at tickling the fancy of half the country and offending the other half.  You wonder if this Chicago-based company is just in such an inclusive bubble they have that “anyone who likes comics would be a Democrat” mindset that I’ve encountered many times.

Still, an entire comic book just beating up on the political enemies of the president, all in praise of a guy who grovels at the feet of our actual enemies, slices away at his own army and whose only resemblance to a barbarian is, sorry to have to mention it, in loosening the baby-killing rules?  (There, that will get the comments section hopping.)  I mean, much as I liked the guy and think he’d be more appropriate to a western, I could at least see how someone would picture George W. Bush as a barbarian and do a comic about that.   But Obama, the guy who slouched a year in a tropical paradise failing to write a book about his life before he’d even accomplished anything, a barbarian?  A guy so blase he makes Morgan Freeman look like Jim Carrey?

What’s next, Paris Hilton as Macguyver?  How about Stephen Hawking, Master of Kung-Fu?

Barack the Barbarian.  One can only conclude that they hit upon the name through alliteration and then nobody was around to say it was a feeble idea.

What are they smoking at Devil’s Due?   I wish I could say this was just a business-minded attempt at boosting comic book sales by aiming for the “we buy everything Obama” market, but it sure looks like Daily Kos whacking material.  Again, nothing wrong at all with such stuff getting published…it’s only the fact that Devil’s Due considered this worth putting out that is astounding.

I probably sound annoyed.  I’m not.  This thing will hit stands, do a little business and go away.  And as much as I hate the way the comic industry joined in the Barack Zombie March, I hope I’d be just as stunned and dismissive if a mainstream company was publishing a comic where John McCain turned into The Hulk.

(9 votes, average: 2.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...