5 Insane Barack Obama Comic Books You Won't Believe are Real
Comics featuring presidents are nothing new - even Nixon showed up in the Fantastic Four, and everyone hated the guy. But the comics industry's obsession with Barack Obama is a little more intense than usual, resulting in some bizarre, baffling and sometimes even disturbing stories. No one ever did a comic where George W. Bush battles zombies, or one where ... well, read on to find out.
Barack the Barbarian: Obama the Epic Bodybuilding Warrior
Barack the Barbarian is exactly what it sounds like: a comic about a muscular, half-naked Obama fighting people with swords.
Back in 2008, The Telegraph published an article titled "Barack Obama: The 50 Things You Might Not Know" that mentioned Obama's childhood love of Conan the Barbarian comics. A few months later, someone published an actual comic inspired by that idea:
Slightly more inspiring than the Hope posters.
It was written by Larry Hama, the same guy who wrote the G.I. Joe comic in the 80s, who says he has no interest in doing a wacky parody and tries to think of this as a real "sword and sorcery" series. A serious sword and sorcery series featuring the president fighting evil wizards who just happens to look like this:
One is clearly George Bush, and the other is clearly Emperor Palpatine.
And they're not the only familiar faces here. The comic is packed with "subtle" cameos in the same vein, like Barack's enemy Red Sarah ...
"Well if the comic is already retarded, what am I supposed to do?" - Cracked Photoshop department.
His valued ally Hilaria (wife of the cowardly Biil) ...
And a wisecracking sphinx shaped like David Letterman.
The stories are loosely based on the highlights of Obama's political career, meaning this is either the most bizarre piece of propaganda published or the most boring adventure comic ever, depending on who you ask.
Any 10-year-old who got this comic as a birthday present must be really pissed at his parents, we know that for sure.
It's really a disappointment for everyone. If you're a kid who likes action and adventure, you're in for a bunch of boring talk about health care reform and Red State vs. Blue State rhetoric. If you're one of those kids whose interests include presidential trivia, you'll be depressed to find out that this comic has absolutely nothing to do with being the president.
Also, your interests are stupid.
The plots are thin, the characters are two-dimensional and predictable, and the not-so-hidden message is that the author of this comic really likes Barack Obama. Basically, this comic is perfect for the "People Who Want to See the President Swing a Sword While Wearing a Loincloth" demographic and absolutely no one else.
But boy oh boy will that demographic be satisfied.
AirGear is a manga series about a group of young people who use mechanical flying shoes to compete with one another and fight. Like most Japanese comics, it makes no sense. In 2008, shortly after Obama's election, it introduced a character called "John Omaha," who happens to be president of the U.S. and happens to look like this:
"It's right over there!"
It's not just a cameo; this guy actually appears in several episodes. It turns out the U.S. government has an interest in the Air-Trek technology, as adolescent air-foot-sky-boxing is a valuable emerging market with a lot of international potential. Omaha is attempting to explain this to the characters when some guys show up out of nowhere and attack him.
It's Japanese, so you're supposed to read it from right to left, and as a lunatic.
The president is saved by a young Air-Trekker called Adachi, and as you can probably guess, this causes them to switch bodies. No explanation: It just happens. The president is now trapped inside the body of a busty Asian teenager, which hasn't happened since that time .
Fox News' top story that day was "OBAMA GROPES YOUNG GIRL."
But Omaha comes to terms with his (um ... "her") new condition disturbingly fast, declaring:
Well, OK then!
Later, U.S. soldiers come to retrieve the president, but she knocks them out with sleeping gas, using the flying shoes to escape into the city (with the help of the other kids). As she explains to them, Omaha never got to know Japan when she was a he and really wants to experience the country. Which goes about as well as you can imagine.
"Man, I was right -- this country really IS all stair-ghosts and nose-boners."
And that's not the only thing Omaha takes the time to get acquainted with: Another scene shows her coming out of the bathroom, looking strangely relaxed.
But it's not all fun, games and veiled implications of inter-body masturbation. The president opens up with the other kids, sharing his/her lifelong dream to become the next Maradona and his tragic past in Africa, where he had to witness his entire village being wiped out by a nuclear explosion.
Really didn't need to turn into a teenage girl to tell that story.
They also talk about the implications of the Air-Trek technology in human society and a vast conspiracy to take over the world. We'll spare you that part, mainly because we didn't understand any of it. Eventually the time comes for the president to give up his new body, which happens with as much explanation as the original switcheroo (or anything else in this comic).
That would be a reasonable assumption, yes.
This story would have been ridiculous enough if it had been told in a humor comic, but the fact that this is a series with real characters, real villains and a complex Robotech-like mythology makes it even more baffling. Then again, so are most things to come out of Japan.
Well, it could have been worse. It could have been an erotic manga.
Tonari no Taro-kun: Obama Costars in Erotic Manga
Further proof that Rule 34 makes no exceptions. If the vaguely sexual tone of the last entry offended you, you might want to stop reading right now. There's nothing vague about this one.
My Neighbor Taro is an erotic manga starring former Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso. Because that premise wasn't bizarre enough by itself, the authors decided to have Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain stop by the prime minister's house for some bizarre depravity:
OK, yes, we'd have sex with manga porn Hillary Clinton. God, you shouldn't make us say that.
This one actually uses their real names, despite being a trillion times more inflammatory than the "JoHn Omaha" manga. The plot starts innocently enough: Obama and Prime Minister Taro are making chitchat when the latter mentions how "formidable" he finds Mrs. Clinton. A little incredulous, Obama says he prefers "young and obedient women," like the prime minister's petite housemaid. This gives Taro a wicked idea.
"I want you to have sex with my maid," he expressed through a series of identical dots.
The story goes on to show Obama graphically getting it on with the maid ...
Sure are a lot of "oohs" and "ahs" for what looks like a miserable time.
... and Taro "seducing" Hillary in a way that only Japanese subway gropers could find arousing.
We said we wanted to have sex with her already, leave us alone.
The former first lady is hesitant to join the orgy, even though President Obama himself tries to persuade her using his famous oratory skills (for once, that's not a double entendre).
Remember, right-to-left reading order. We don't want you to miss any part of this fascinating plot.
Eventually she succumbs to Taro's charms, yelling, "It's been so long!" at the moment of climax. And that's when she hears the eight words every man involved in a threesome fears the most:
At one point in the middle of all this, Taro looks over at Obama and says, "With this, we're brothers in sex." A touching moment of true friendship and emotion that unfortunately we can't show you, because 90 percent of the image is filled with exploding genitals.
As they part ways, Taro says to Obama that they should do this again sometime soon, to which Obama replies:
That probably sounded hilarious in Japanese.
By the way, that's the first time McCain has appeared since the beginning of the comic ... which means that he spent the rest of the evening just standing there. Watching.
Drafted: Obama and the Alien Resistance
Sometimes it makes sense to include the president in stories about alien invasions. Like, if they're blasting a laser through the White House, that warrants at least a reaction shot. But there are other times you really gotta work to put him in there. Like when the story is set in a world where he isn't even president, just some random guy from Chicago.
Drafted is a sci-fi comic series about some aliens who come to forcibly "draft" the entire human race into their intergalactic war. It usually centers on Gabriel, the leader of the human forces, but in 2009 they put out a graphic novel that, bizarrely, starred a completely different character:
This is like randomly making Jimmy Carter the main character in The Empire Strikes Back.
Senator Barack Obama, a silent badass (he's mostly mute after a battle injury) who leads and inspires a group of human survivors. He appears as a senator because the series started when Bush was still president, and they made him a mute because ... actually, we have no idea.
"OK, Obama's speeches are always really impressive and inspiring, but I'm a terrible writer. How do I reconcile these two things?"
After Earth is viciously attacked by the aliens' enemies, Obama and others are tasked with rebuilding what's left of Chicago. But the group soon loses contact with their superiors because of bad weather conditions, and they're left stranded in a shelter for 100 days. On top of that, they have to fight off the armed scavengers who try to steal what's left of their food. Why isn't everyone in the group dead within two weeks? Basically, because that mysterious, almost magical Obama guy inspires everyone to stay alive.
With punching!
But as time passes, Obama's followers start losing faith in him, and a lot of them even defect from the group to join the scavengers. After even Obama's sidekick betrays him, he wanders alone into the city, climbs the tallest building still standing and carves a locator chip out of his wrist to send a distress signal to the aliens. Because he's that awesome.
Ask yourself: Would Richard Nixon have done that?
Obama collapses because of the cold, not caring whether he dies as long as his friends are saved. Then he's rescued by the usual protagonist of the story, making a cameo in his own comic. But the most puzzling part by far is the flashback scene that shows Obama's family being literally disintegrated during the initial alien attack:
This has taken a turn.
It's one thing to show the character's motivation and another to depict the gruesome deaths of two little girls who really exist. If Obama ever reads the comic (perhaps under the impression that Spider-Man might show up), we can't imagine he'd be too happy about that part (in fact, we're positive he wouldn't be).
By the way, Drafted is published by the same company that came up with Barack the Barbarian. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, the guy who runs the company stated that his motivation for making these comics is: "I want people to look at this and say 'What the hell is this?'"
Mission accomplished.
Oh-Bomb-Ah!: Obama's Superpowered Baby Mama
Superhero comics aren't immune to Obamania: For a while there, he appeared in almost as many titles as Wolverine. Like that Spider-Man comic that came out the week before the inauguration, where Spidey's shape-shifting enemy The Chameleon tries to impersonate Obama and get sworn in as president. Fortunately, Spider-Man stopped the impostor in time (... OR DID HE?!).
Isn't Obama left-handed? Also, Spider-Man looks like Red Skull.
DC couldn't be left be behind, so a few weeks later it included a scene in Final Crisis #7 implying that Obama is an alternate-reality version of Superman. It was a last-minute addition, but the writer says he "hopes to do more things with the Obama character." Also, he said Beyonce is Wonder Woman.
"... as a male stripper."
And then there's Youngblood #9 by Rob Liefeld, in which the White House is invaded by time-traveling superterrorists and Obama demonstrates he wouldn't make a very effective action hero.
"No one will think much of a big clock moving across the hallway."
But as ridiculous as those stories are, none of them compares to Obama's role in a comic called BombQueen, which is about a voluptuous supervillainess who, from what we read, appears to be under legal obligation to remove her shirt at least twice per issue.
Is she ... giving birth to him?
In a miniseries called Oh-Bomb-Ah!, the president announces that he'll be shutting down Bomb Queen's city of crime, which she doesn't take very well. Bomb Queen immediately starts thinking of ways to discredit Obama.
Searching for dirt on the prez, Bomb Queen finds a tape that shows a young Obama walking into the "Chicago University of Embryology" ...
Why would they need a whole university for that?
... and decides to steal his sperm and impregnate herself with it.
Smoking and drinking while pregnant? If you're not careful, that baby will be born a retarded plot point in a shitty comic.
Does she really give birth to Obama's kid? Will she ever be able to get her fantastic figure back? We'll never know, because only one issue of the four announced came out. The same thing happened to the Youngblood comic featuring Obama, and the president hasn't shown up in Spider-Man or Superman comics again. Rather than feeling relieved that this particular fad has finally fizzled out, we should be worried about what the comics industry's next obsession will be.
Maxwell Yezpitelok lives in Chile, and when he isn't waiting for the next catastrophe, he likes to waste his time writing back to scammers or making stupid comics.
For more bizarre comic book crossovers, check out The 5 Most Insane Celebrity Comic Book Cameos. Or discover why Batman is more terrifying than we first thought, in The 20 Most Ridiculous Batman Comics Ever Released.
And stop by Linkstorm to Obama rick-rolling Biden.
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