1 President Barack Obama. In November 2008, Jon Swaine of the Telegraph wrote an article entitled “Barack Obama: The 50 Facts You Might Not Know.” The first item on the list was “He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comic books.” Whether that was meant to be in the present tense or not, it inspired Marvel Comics to quickly put out a variant edition of January 2009’s Amazing Spider-Man #583, complete with a short story about Spider-Man attending Barack Obama’s inauguration and preventing the villainous master of disguise Chameleon from taking Obama’s spot as president. Obama made a number of appearances early in his presidential tenure. They all tended to be fairly positive portrayals, even while fighting zombies in the aptly titled President Evil.
2 President George W. Bush. Generally speaking, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, made out well in his various comic book appearances, which were usually the standard “briefing the president about the danger we’re in” type. One early one, though, is something that I imagine Bush would not be thrilled with. In 2001, in the early issues of Ultimate X-Men, the X-Men initially gain the support of the new president when they rescue his daughter from Magneto and Magneto’s band of mutant terrorists. However, after continued terrorist attacks by Magneto, Bush splits from the X-Men and orders an all-out assault on Magneto’s Savage Land home. Magneto, naturally, turns the attack around and decides to annihilate the United States. First off, he captures Bush, strips him naked, and forces him to lick his boots clean on national television (luckily, this is all off panel). He then tries to drop a car on the naked president, but Professor X and the X-Men show up in time to stop him.
3 President Ronald Reagan. President Reagan appeared in a number of DC comics during the 1980s without incident. However, he was not so lucky with a Captain America storyline in 1988. The basic idea of the story, which came to a head in Captain America #344, is that the villainous Viper has drugged the drinking water of Washington, DC, and turned everyone into snakelike beings. Captain America goes to the White House, where he finds President Reagan has also been drugged! In the end, Reagan recovers from the toxin. Or does he?
4 Henry Kissinger. Kissinger, who was secretary of state under Nixon and continued for the rest of Gerald Ford’s time as president, made a strange appearance in 1976’s Super-Villain Team-Up #6 when the Fantastic Four show up in Doctor Doom’s kingdom of Latveria only to discover that Kissinger has signed a nonaggression treaty with Doom.
5 President Bill Clinton. Clinton appeared in many comic books during the 1990s, including eulogizing Superman after his death in 1992. However, the one he probably would least enjoy was 2001’s Uncanny X-Men #401. In #399, the mutant prostitute Stacy-X made her debut. After antimutant terrorists destroy the brothel where she works, Stacy-X ends up joining the X-Men. She cannot quit her ways right away, though, and spends the night with the former president.
6 Ayatollah Khomeini. In 1988, a controversial storyline appeared in the pages of Batman #427, in which the Joker beats Robin nearly to death. At the end of the issue, the Joker leaves the nearly lifeless Robin in a locked warehouse with explosives. Robin tries to free himself, but the issue ends with the warehouse exploding. Readers were then given a choice—dial one number if they wanted to see Robin survive and dial another if they wanted Robin to die. The readers voted for death. Batman, naturally, wants revenge on the Joker for his crimes, but the Joker discovers an unusual ally—the Ayatollah Khomeini!
The Joker is given an ambassadorship and thus Batman can’t lay a finger on him! Naturally, the Joker is too unstable for that line of work and he eventually betrays the Iranian leader.
7 The Beatles. The Fab Four made an amusing guest appearance in 1964’s Strange Tales #130, when the Thing and the Human Torch keep getting derailed when they are trying to watch the Beatles in concert with their girlfriends. The cover of the issue is particularly interesting, as it has the Thing and the Human Torch in Beatle wigs.
8 Ira Glass. The great cartoonist Lynda Barry had a regular comic strip on Salon.com that she later put together to form her excellent 2002 release, One! Hundred! Demons! The concept of the series was to do a twist on the Japanese Zen painting exercise called “One Hundred Demons,” where you paint your “demons” in an effort to get them out of your system. In this case, Barry turns her demons into funny, engaging, and heartfelt comic stories. Probably the most popular story from the book is “Head Lice and My Worst Boyfriend,” which explores the troubles she had with who she described as her “worst boyfriend,” a guy who made her feel worthless. That boyfriend? None other than the host of This American Life, Ira Glass. Barry and Glass dated in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Admirably, Glass confirms pretty much every story Barry has to tell about him. “I was an idiot. I was in the wrong. About the breakup…[a]bout so many things with her. Anything bad she says about me I can confirm.”