Look! Up in the sky! It's a Barack! It's a McCain!

Last week, a new pair of dueling comic book heroes hit the shelves: John McCain and Barack Obama, each standing proud, drawn against an American flag background

Was this just a petty attempt by the candidates to score some of that sweet toy-collecting manchild vote? Because it’s a lot more efficient than going from parents’ basement to parents’ basement canvassing. But it would’ve been even more effective to just leak to message boards that Obama is the fifth cylon or that McCain is a Skrull.

But no, this apparently had nothing to do with either campaign. The 28-page comic books depicting the bios of the two candidates were produced independently by publisher IDW to cash in on this here election thingy, because I guess it’s hot right now.

IDW’s Scott Dunbier is hoping to appeal to more than just X-Men fans and cultural train-wreck enthusiasts. “I think that people who normally don’t go to comic shops are really going to be part of the audience that pick this up,” he told Reuters. That’s assuming, of course, those people go to comic shops to pick it up. Which they normally don’t do. Your logic is… flawed, Scott.

And while the books try to strike a neutral, just-the-facts tone, one candidate’s story lends itself a little more easily to the medium than the other: While Obama’s childhood in Hawaii is cute and all, the McCain issue opens with him slumped over in a Hanoi prison cell in 1969. Written over that image? “Navy pilot John Sidney McCain III is in pain.” Drama!

But it all evens out, since the cover illustration of McCain proves just how perfect he’d be as a Batman villain. Like, I don’t know, the Jowler or something.

[The Telegraph]