Bill Willingham takes aim at the "Age of Superhero Decadence"

[wonderfly]

There's a recent online editorial by Bill Willingham, (writer of Vertigo's "Fables") that's stirring up a bit of conversation, (or controversy, depending on who you ask). Read the editorial here: Superheroes: Still Plenty of Super, but Losing Some of the Hero. (http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bwillingham/2009/01/09/superheroes-still-plenty-of-super-but-losing-some-of-the-hero/)

Comic Book Resources has an article on the editorial (http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2009/01/willingham-no-more-superhero-decadence-for-me/), (with commentary by others, including comic book writers like James Hudnall, and Kurt Busiek).

Thoughts?

[Ducard]

Right now my boy is flying his Superman action figure around my head and beating me with the punch-action fists. “Daddy, I’m Superman and you’re the bad guy.” Not, “Daddy, I’m a self-loathing, hypocritical dupe for an imperialist nation, and you’re a misunderstood victim of my country’s destructive foreign policy.”


Heh.

[TheVileOne]

I hope people don't take it the wrong way. It was very much an editorial, opinion piece. But honestly I agree with every word and I'm glad that Willingham said it.

Comic books have become too cynical. Willingham isn't saying these stories are bad, but they've basically become the status quo. So much so, that we've forgotten that some of these characters are supposed to be heroes and role models.

Civil War as groundbreaking, revolutionary, or whatever you want to say it was is pretty guilty of this. You had heroes killing each other for stupid reasons. To me it didn't make any sense. The conclusion Cap came to felt pretty hollow to me. I thought the post 9/11 Captain America comics were despicable, disgusting, and pathetic.

I loved Shadowpact which was a highly underrated group. You had a bunch of obscure, oddball heroes but they were still interesting characters and above all heroes. They weren't scumbags that happened to have jobs as heroes like most of the Ultimates are. I mean I love Ragman. Ragman whose costume is made up of condemned souls, but they are souls that are trying to pay off their debt to redeem themselves. Detective Chimp = awesomeness.

I think what Willingham is saying, in critiquing and breaking down superheroes in comics so much they've completely gone in the other direction. Now it's the norm, and it's hurt comics and heroes as a result.

I mean Willingham didn't mention that Spider-man made a deal with the Devil in the comics. SPIDER-MAN MADE A DEAL WITH SATAN BECAUSE MARVEL COMICS NEEDED A WAY TO END THE SPIDER-MARRIAGE! Spider-man can't get a divorce. But Spider-man can make a deal with Satan to give up his sacred marriage. All that and they can't even retcon the time he hit MJ or the Gwen Stacy twins.

That's another thing, look what they did to Gwen Stacy.

[Shawn Hopkins]

He points it out himself, but he is indeed partly to blame for this and one of the odder comics professionals I could imagine promoting this viewpoint. Since he wasn't in a hurry to go into specifics, the Elementals decided real early on in their adventures that they weren't going to get locked in a cycle of beating bad guys and having them locked up only to escape and threaten them again. The policy they adopted as a group was that if anybody messes with them, they would effin' kill them and they did just that. In addition to the violence Elementals was also pretty heavy on the sex and skin, it had a couple of "Sex Specials."

Oh, and the main villain, Saker's, motivation for being evil was because he was angry that Jesus Christ, who in this story is a false messiah who is a lecherous, charlatan magician who is part demon, had raised him from the dead and as a consequence made him immortal and cut off his contact with God. Also, there was a Christian-themed supergroup started by a Jimmy Swaggart stand-in called The Rapture who were bad guys the Elementals killed.

Fun for the whole family. I guess he's had some kind of conversion.

I sort of agree with him that some of the superhero comic icons have become too grim and too sullied and too conflicted. Captain America should have, well, not blind patriotism and willingness to obey the current government, but a clearness of purpose and a deep belief in founding American principals such as individual freedom and equality. Mark Waid did a good job with him, putting him in a Chinese concentration camp to free Sharon Carter in one story. Sharon was in a rush to get out of there and get to a rendevous point but she turned around to find Cap literally breaking chains with his shield, freeing political prisoners.

But it's very disappointing to see a guy whose work I used to respect posting on this new right-wing Hollywood blog I've been hearing about and quoting Rush Limbaugh. I don't agree that superheroes should take a blind "my country, right or wrong" stance. Questioning the direction of the country does not make them unpatriotic. And if he can continue to make Fables complex and include gray areas, why are other comics writers so wrong to do it in the superhero genre? Superheroes should be different just because superheroes should be different?

Edit: Ragman is an odd choice for virtuous hero, Vileone. His costume is made up of condemned souls because he hunts down evil-doers to kill them and add their souls to it. He tries to fight it, but he is a deeply conflicted instrument of supernatural vengeance.

[TheVileOne]

I don't necessarily see Ragman as virtuous but in a way that idea of condemned souls working to redeem themselves is a somewhat noble one. But I think the point is that when Willingham was doing Ragman, that Ragman was conflicted. When some of the souls in his costume were extinguished when his costume was damaged, Ragman wept and grieved over them. He was upset because they would never have that chance to redeem themselves. There is that conflict, but deep down I think Ragman is a good person that wants to help the condemned souls.

My other point is in Shadowpact, he made this odd group with all these weird backgrounds positive, benevolent characters. They were still flawed, but they weren't these jerk almost thug like heroes and anti-heroes in comics that seem to be so popular these days in the superhero books.

As for the Elementals thing, it's like the Doctor says. At first you are really dark because "that's what you do when you are young."

I think you are missing the point about what Willingham is saying. It's not necessarily right wing, but he's saying with superheroes, writers have so desperately tried to raise the bar so much to take them over the edge that they've lost sight of what made these characters superheroes and role models in the first place.

The stuff with Captain America fighting the Arab suicide bombers was ridiculous. I mean God, is anyone going to tell me that stuff was quality Captain America writing?

I don't think Willingham is saying my country right or wrong. He's using the Limbaugh quote to say if writers insist on pushing the envelope with making superheroes edgier and darker, leave me out of it, I won't be a part of it.

[Martianinvader]

But it's very disappointing to see a guy whose work I used to respect posting on this new right-wing Hollywood blog I've been hearing about and quoting Rush Limbaugh. I don't agree that superheroes should take a blind "my country, right or wrong" stance. Questioning the direction of the country does not make them unpatriotic. And if he can continue to make Fables complex and include gray areas, why are other comics writers so wrong to do it in the superhero genre?
His thinking is, because heroes are HEROES, they shouldn't be written complex. Which is a dense and generalized stand to take.

And Superman doesn't say "the American way" anymore because that implies Americans are always right, and no one is always right.

The closest Willingham got to hitting the nail was when he called modern comics industry "inbred." THAT is the problem. It's a lack of varied ideas. It isn't disagreeing with Republicans that's killing things.

[TheVileOne]

I think you are wrong in that he's saying they shouldn't be complex. He says that they should still be heroes.

He had a problem with in one story Cap is apologizing to a terrorist for all the bad things they've done, and in another he has a problem with Cap going along with a government coverup.

Also his point about Superman Returns was 100% on the money. There's something wrong with using AND THE AMERICAN WAY in Superman Returns, but it's OK for Superman to be a deadbeat dad of an illegitimate child as well as a borderline home-wrecker.

And people wonder why Superman Returns failed. Maybe deep down some of us wanted AND THE AMERICAN WAY, or the idea, fake or not, idealistic or not to still be intact!

[Shawn Hopkins]

The fact that he can still pretty much justify Elementals as good guys because they were fighting bad guys no matter what their methods, the fact that he harps on issues of patriotism several times in the article and the place that this is posted makes it seem to me that the main place he thinks heroes are lacking in "heroism" is in not being patriotic and nationalistic enough. Consider the objective of this article and consider its intended audience, maybe look around the site a little. This is a site meant to appeal to people who think the US is in some kind of "culture war" and is losing good American values like patriotism in the "Obamanation."

It's telling that his idea of going back to basics isn't a superhero that has a strong moral code against killing or unnecessary violence or one who tries to be a good role model (which Superman and Cap always have, by the way). Instead, the example he uses is being allowed to write a story in which a superhero seems to support the war in Afghanistan.

I get that comic companies have, over the years, continually raised the bar on sex and violence in an attempt to top each other and show that they have outgrown the days of the stifling comics code. I agree that certain superhero characters have been made grimmer than they should have, I mean, don't get me started on what DC has done to the Marvel Family. But he really doesn't give much digital ink to that issue and I think his main concerns are much more political.

Also, that Captain America story with the discussion with the terrorist was just bad writing, it shouldn't be people's go-to example of how Captain America has been handled in recent years. It was reviled by the lefties, too, from what I remember.

http://www.thexaxis.com/misc/captainamerica6.htm

[Ed Liu]

I think you are wrong in that he's saying they shouldn't be complex. He says that they should still be heroes.

I think the problem I have with his article is that he doesn't really seem to be saying very much of anything clearly except, "I don't like the way a lot of superhero comics are written today." The political trappings around it are just a distraction that obscures the fact that he really isn't saying much of anything.

He says that this age of Superhero Decadence undermines the goodness of superheroes, but then tries to justify his own work (and even says he's still proud of it) by saying that they were still doing the good vs. evil thing "albeit imperfectly," as though everyone else who's doing the same thing wasn't trying to introduce nuance or complexity to superhero stories. So, it's OK when he does it, but nobody else is doing it or nobody else does it right? And then he admits that "for the most part superhero stories still involve the good guys battling the bad guys for identifiably good causes." If that's true, then what's the problem?

He talks about the importance of superheroes having unshakable personal codes and a clear sense of mission, and misses the fact that this also perfectly describes the Red Skull, Ra's al-Ghul, and Doctor Doom. And Osama bin Laden, for that matter. I also don't think that this is the problem with the Ultimates (IMO, the poster children for the modern superheroes with feet of clay and no moral center). I think the problem is that absolutely everyone in the Ultimates (and nearly everyone in all of Mark Millar's comics, frankly) is a JerkAss (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Jerkass). A morally assured JerkAss, but a JerkAss nonetheless, and what little bit of meaning I find in The Ultimates is what results when Great Power is bestowed on JerkAsses who don't treat it with Great Responsibility.

He had a problem with in one story Cap is apologizing to a terrorist for all the bad things they've done, and in another he has a problem with Cap going along with a government coverup.re: that Cap story. Willingham is the first commentator I've seen who seems to have noticed that Cap was pounding the stuffing out of the bad guy while he was apologizing, and handed him over to SHIELD at the end of it. Every single criticism of it I've seen elsewhere makes it sound like Cap is on his knees crying and begging some murderous dirtbag for forgiveness. Willingham still hand-waves it away as though it's unimportant, but at least he acknowledges it.

I also refuse to believe that Cap ("I believe in nothing but the Dream") would be OK with the idea of invoking Freedom, Patriotism, and the American Way to justify handing buckets of money, weapons, food, and public support to despots, dictators, and tyrants who brutally suppress and murder their own people and steal half or more of what we give them. Really, the part of his "apology" I have an issue with is the part where he says, "We've changed." And besides, isn't that evidence exactly the kind of unshakable personal moral code that he says superheroes should have MORE of?

But, you know, I didn't like much of Willingham's superhero comics before, and if I can still defend Cerebus as art while believing that Dave Sim is seriously, egregiously wrong in a lot of his thinking, this bit of fluff isn't going to persuade me to drop Fables unless the kind of simpleminded thinking he seems to be advocating (sometimes) creeps its way into there.

[The Overlord]

I think you are wrong in that he's saying they shouldn't be complex. He says that they should still be heroes.

He had a problem with in one story Cap is apologizing to a terrorist for all the bad things they've done, and in another he has a problem with Cap going along with a government coverup.

Also his point about Superman Returns was 100% on the money. There's something wrong with using AND THE AMERICAN WAY in Superman Returns, but it's OK for Superman to be a deadbeat dad of an illegitimate child as well as a borderline home-wrecker.

And people wonder why Superman Returns failed. Maybe deep down some of us wanted AND THE AMERICAN WAY, or the idea, fake or not, idealistic or not to still be intact!

I think another problem is it seems Willingham thinks super hero comics should just be white hats vs. black hats, with nothing in the middle.

Not every villain works a black hat, Magneto works better as an Anti Villain then anything else, while the Red Skull works best as a complete monster. There should Anti Villains and Complete Monsters and everything in between.

[Wounded_Dragon]

Is this anything beyond shameless self-promotion, an attempt to tap into leftover political excitement this year?

[Ed Liu]

Steven Grant takes on some of the points Willingham raises (http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=19559). A lot politer than you might expect it to be, and he raises the same point that I've felt for a long time (and may even have cribbed from him) that Superman and superheroes in general haven't been the same since the double-whammy of Watergate and the Vietnam War.

[Jacob T. Paschal]

Personally, I tend not to like political opinions being interjected into comics. It's almost silly, considering the stance many take that heroes have to be law-abiding role models. Truthfully, I think it's gotten to the point that the editors simply use such an excuse so they don't have to answer why the hell the Joker, Luthor, and other villains haven't been killed yet.

Sure, it could be me coming from my background as a fan of Manga in which the good guys typically haven't got any quarrel killing their enemies (because let's face it, they aren't going to stop doing what they do and at some point you've got to respect their choices as men and do what you must, i.e. killing them).

[Ed Liu]

Personally, I tend not to like political opinions being interjected into comics. It's almost silly, considering the stance many take that heroes have to be law-abiding role models.

I keep taking issue with statements like this because it's just plain wrong. If you don't want political opinions being interjected into (superhero) comics, then you can say goodbye to the following characters or works:

- Captain America (political from the second word of his name and arguably the first, and this is a political statement (http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r293/VIEWLINER/0806/PA01.jpg), however crude)
- Wonder Woman (go look up William Moulton Marston's original conception and the message he wanted to send with her)
- The X-Men
- The Fantastic Four (they leapt into space in the first place to beat the Commies, after all)
- Iron Man (ditto -- he was essentially an anti-Commie spybuster for most of his early career)
- The Dark Knight Returns
- Alan Moore's Swamp Thing
- V for Vendetta
- Watchmen
- You know what, it'll be easier to just whack out everything Alan Moore's ever written :).
- Spider-Man ("With Great Power &c" is a political statement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_C._Lynch))
- G.I. Joe
- Optimus Prime ("Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" is also a political statement)

Politics has always been in superhero comics. I think the genre would be rather poorer without it. Your issue is not with politics as such. It's with STUPID politics or politics that are grafted on after the fact, poorly integrated, and preachy.

Sure, it could be me coming from my background as a fan of Manga in which the good guys typically haven't got any quarrel killing their enemies (because let's face it, they aren't going to stop doing what they do and at some point you've got to respect their choices as men and do what you must, i.e. killing them).There are the truly irredeemable, but I think their numbers are far smaller than is popularly believed. Batman doesn't just kill off Two-Face because he holds out hope, however slim, that someday the old Harvey Dent will re-emerge, and I think that optimism and hope that he won't be needed some day has become fairly central to his character. Also, people with absolutely no qualms with killing their enemies are usually called psychopaths :).

[The Overlord]

Personally, I tend not to like political opinions being interjected into comics. It's almost silly, considering the stance many take that heroes have to be law-abiding role models. Truthfully, I think it's gotten to the point that the editors simply use such an excuse so they don't have to answer why the hell the Joker, Luthor, and other villains haven't been killed yet.

Sure, it could be me coming from my background as a fan of Manga in which the good guys typically haven't got any quarrel killing their enemies (because let's face it, they aren't going to stop doing what they do and at some point you've got to respect their choices as men and do what you must, i.e. killing them).

Maybe you should Punisher Max then, its pretty good and Punisher kills all sorts of evil scum (you won't feel bad when Frank kills, say, modern day slavers)

Most Manga take past or in fantasy realms or in the future during a war. In today's modern scoiety, you can't just go around killing criminals, that's illegal, that's what death Note was about, if they do that they would end like Light Yagami, hunted by the police.

Maybe Batman could get away with killing Joker, maybe, but there's no way Superman could kill Lex, he would look like a fascist bully and society would regard him as a criiminal, but Lex seems like an upstanding citizen to the rest of the population. Plus if Superman decided to kill a non powered human like Lex, wouldn't that be a major abuse of power? Superman would look like fascist if he got decide which non powered humans got to live or die.

[Shawn Hopkins]

Honestly, superhero comics started out political and dealing with social issues. Look at the early issues of Superman where he battles political corruption, smacks a wife beater and takes on slumlords and crooked businessmen. And for all the whining people are doing nowadays about how Superman should blindly support the "American Way" as defined by social conservative culture warriors, they forget that he started out as kind of a lefty social activist, not the staunch defender of the status quo he would later become.

Just because this kind of thing was somewhat stifled for a few years by the oppressive restrictions of the Comics Code, which pretty much required authority figures to always be shown in a positive light, doesn't mean that's the way comics ought to be.

[macattack]

Call me cynical, but with Bush (the demon of the left, where most "creatives" lean) ceding office to Obama (the big hope of the left) I think that superheroes will act more heroically and generally be more clear, at least at first. A lot of writers and artists across all entertainment platforms have admitted that their socially, politically, and emotional stories were at least influenced out of anger at the Bush administration.

The bias is pretty clear when we have Spidey saving the President-elect, no offense. I don't remember any Marvel hero rescuing Bush at all during his Presidency.

Now the rage is gone, and we'll be back to clearly-defined stories, for better or for worse. By 2010 all of the apocalyptic, invasion, and disaster material in Hollywood will be rotated out, 24's ratings will probably collapse, Rolling Stone's covers will be filled with poppy fields and grassy hills and doting on the Obama administration and we'll all just be . . . happy. Blissfully happy until another Republican takes office, and then the rage and thinly-disguised agendas in entertainment will start all over again.

It's a vicious cycle.

[Ed Liu]

The bias is pretty clear when we have Spidey saving the President-elect, no offense. I don't remember any Marvel hero rescuing Bush at all during his Presidency.

Rescuing, no, but he did pop up a few times over the years in Marvel books. I remember an appearance in The Ultimates that wasn't unflattering, or at least wasn't any more unflattering than anybody looks in that comic. Besides, no superhero rescued Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton that I can remember, so I'm finding it a bit hard to believe that this new backup story in Spider-Man is more evidence of the liberal conspiracy.

I'm willing to take them at their word that they did the story because Obama has said he collects Spider-Man comics. As a consumer of culture, Obama is probably a whole lot more like us comic book nerds than any other President in my lifetime. Also, as others have pointed out, they're not changing any of their upcoming storylines where Norman Osborne, a confirmed supervillain, is the head of SHIELD, so if you're going to take this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, they're sending the subtle message that an Obama Presidency is just "new boss, same as the old boss," which wouldn't seem to be a very pro-Obama message at all. This is only one reason why I don't think there's any more metaphorical value to be read into this backup as there was in killing Captain America.

Now if Dark Horse writes Obama into Conan, THAT would be funny :D.

[Shawn Hopkins]

The Ultimate X-Men saved a thinly veiled president Bush in the Tomorrow People storyline. Just before Magneto executed him on live television. And even after that president had authorized an initiative to wipe out their race. He was thoroughly humiliated by Magneto first, though.

On the other hand, the Punisher killed the American President and everybody else on Earth as far as he knew in Punisher: The End." And that president wasn't shown, but because of the way he interacted with his VP could have easily been Bush. The Punisher snuck into Bush's office once and told him he would kill him, too, in another issue. Garth Ennis was kinder to Bush in the early issues of "The Boys," though, casting him as the anti-super hero "Dakota Bob" while Cheney was the reprehensible pro-corporate superhero vice-president"Vic the Veep." That may have changed later, though.

And of course, Warren Ellis created a superhero that killed Bush. But that's the kind of thing Ellis would do. Gross images warning.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=9648

You know, I just realized that all of my examples are foreigners. They seem more eager to deal with these issues. And their politics would usually seem left leaning to Americans, of course.

There was a nice article in the Christian Science Monitor on this very issue.

http://features.csmonitor.com/books/2009/01/09/do-comic-books-lean-left/

I think the final quote sums it up pretty well. People are taking this too seriously and using one comic to try to pin a liberal media conspiracy on a medium that's actually filled with a lot of diverse, conflicting voices.

“All of which is to say,” Serwer concludes, “that while the politics of comic books are often interesting, they’re also often very incoherent, and hard to interpret as nakedly partisan.”

[wonderfly]

I don't remember any Marvel hero rescuing Bush at all during his Presidency.

Bush wasn't so much rescued as he and the Congressional higher-ups of Washington D.C. were evacuated when D.C. was nuked by Kang, back in the pages of Kurt Busiek's Avengers in 2001. Bush in turn, (alongside the Marvel heroes) led the American resistance against Kang's world rule.

Also, a fairly positive portrayal of Bush was seen in the pages of Iron Man in 2003/2004, the "Iron Man: Secretary of Defense" issues by John Jackson Miller. (http://blog.farawaypress.com/2009/01/obama-makes-mu-debut.html)

On the other hand, in the pages of "Marvel: 1602" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_1602), in the future that Steve Rogers came from, Bush had been elected "President for Life" and had thrown in jail all of the superheroes, (thanks, Neil Gaiman, for throwing that bit into what was otherwise an excellent mini-series)...:sweat:

Also, as Shawn mentioned, the Punisher threatened Bush's life in the pages of Punisher, (the "Marvel Knights" comic). As the article Shawn linked to points out, that comic also came out immediately after September 11th, (what the article doesn't mention was that the story was written and drawn months earlier, it was just creepy timing that had the issue come out right after September 11th, in the midst of all the "Pro-Bush" support).

Rescuing, no, but he did pop up a few times over the years in Marvel books. I remember an appearance in The Ultimates that wasn't unflattering, or at least wasn't any more unflattering than anybody looks in that comic. Besides, no superhero rescued Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton that I can remember, so I'm finding it a bit hard to believe that this new backup story in Spider-Man is more evidence of the liberal conspiracy.

I don't read the Ultimate books, so I can't comment on that. However, Bill Clinton's daughter Chelsie was rescued by the Hulk in the pages of Peter David's run on Hulk.

Also, Bill Clinton was one of the pallbearers the first time Captain America "died" back in the 90's, (during Mark Waid's run). I remember thinking, "What makes you think you are worthy enough to touch the casket of Captain Freakin' America?!?" Mind you, I don't think any President is worthy enough to attend the funeral of Captain America.

In comparsion to those potrayals of Clinton, it's important to remember that Nixon was arguably the main villain of "Watchmen", and Nixon was also strongly hinted at as being the leader of the "Secret Empire" (http://io9.com/5022305/why-richard-nixon-should-be-your-dystopian-president), (leading to several years of Captain American being all angst about the America Dream).

http://features.csmonitor.com/books/...oks-lean-left/ (http://features.csmonitor.com/books/2009/01/09/do-comic-books-lean-left/)

I think the final quote sums it up pretty well. People are taking this too seriously and using one comic to try to pin a liberal media conspiracy on a medium that's actually filled with a lot of diverse, conflicting voices.

“All of which is to say,” Serwer concludes, “that while the politics of comic books are often interesting, they’re also often very incoherent, and hard to interpret as nakedly partisan.”Except that last quote from that article is wrong: It's NOT Obama who hands SHIELD over to Norman Osborn...it's not clearly George Bush either, (though I like to think Marvel had Bush in mind). It's simply "Mr. President" who gives power to Norman.

Still, I tend to agree with macattack: For some reason, I can actually picture there being less "shadowy government conspiracy" storylines now that Obama's in office, and I doubt there will be any potshots at Obama by comic book writers, like there was with Bush, (I'm looking at you Millar, Ellis, and Ennis).

All of which may have little to do with Willingham's article, (he was maintaining that the superheroes were too dark, and I think we're talking about the political structures of comic book universes being too dark and dystopian, which is somewhat a seperate discussion).

[Shawn Hopkins]

Their understanding of the Norman Osborne situation is wrong, but I don't think the quote is. The way comic books treat the president is haphazard and depends on the writer and the needs of the story. Sometimes he can have full reprehensible knowledge of the horrible conspiracy the superheroes are fighting against and sometimes he can be an authority figure worthy of respect or at least worth being rescued and protected "so the bad guys don't win." There are too many voices, babbling in different directions, to try to analyze the entire comic book medium as if there is one unified or even overarching political theme. It's like asking if books lean left.

According to last night's CBS news, President Bush has around a 22 percent approval rating on leaving office. Many people dislike him for what they perceive as a number of serious mistakes and those mistakes have seriously damaged many people's trust in the American government. There's just a general feeling of contempt for the man among a lot of people and of course that's going to trickle down to comic books.

Obama hasn't even taken office yet so he can get to making mistakes. Of course he's going to get better treatment, at least for now, than Bush has been getting in the last few years or so and the themes of distrust with the government may lessen for a while. It's called a honeymoon period.

Oh, there's an interesting treatment of the American president in Frank Miller's Martha Washington series. President Rexall is a straight up evil, racist president who oppresses minorities and sticks them in projects that are basically prisons. He's what your average Berkley student thinks of when they think Republican. But when he's pretty much assassinated his well-meaning liberal successor Howard Nissen, although he makes a lot of positive reforms, also manages to screw up. Eventually people vote back in the evil president, even though he's become a brain in a robot body.