Obama’s Spidey Sense — New Prez in Upcoming Spider-Man

Given the enormity of the problems facing America right now, a lot of people are hoping President-Elect Barack Obama will turn out to have superhuman powers. He may not, but at least he's got a friend who does.

In the upcoming "The Amazing Spider-Man" #583, Obama appears "palling around" (as Sarah Palin would say) with the arachnid superhero. In the comic, the new commander-in-chief meets Spidey, and the superhero thwarts an Inauguration Day scheme by a villain called the Chameleon. Marvel Comics' head Joe Quesada heard that Obama was a Spider-Man collector and proclaimed, "A Spider-Man fan moving into the Oval Office is an event that must be commemorated in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man."

Obama's not the first president to be featured in a comic book. Among others, Ronald Reagan made an appearance in the pages of "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns," and Bill Clinton had a spot in "Superman: The Man of Steel."

We'd also like to think the original inspiration for the morbidly obese Spider-Man bad guy, Kingpin, was former president William Howard Taft.
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Obama, a comic-book collector, being elected president came in #2 on our countdown of 50 wonderfully geeky moments of 2008. Click here to see the other 49 after the jump.