AUGUST 2015

By August, we all must have been pretty exhausted. Thank god there are other things to care about in the world than comics -- serious things, like politics.

Except in 2015, politicians got desperate enough to find an entire new way to try to connect with “regular folks”: talking about comic book characters.

Ted Cruz, a creepy statue recently escaped from a haunted wax museum, took a break from terrifying small children in order to tell The New York Times Magazine that his favorite superheros included Rorschach from the comic-book maxi-series Watchmen, a sociopath whose love of violence is a result of his repressed homosexuality and abusive upbringing, and who is ultimately murdered because of his refusal to compromise. Or as the GOP calls him, The Feel-Good Character of 1987.

While many in the godless liberal media may have snickered over this choice, others argued vociferously on behalf of Cruz’s reading of Watchmen. Jim Gergahty of the conservative magazine The National Review declared, “I find myself in the strange position of agreeing with Jeet Heer… whether or not a comic book reader likes Rorschach’s extreme measures and characterization, he’s indisputably a heroic figure.” Yes, once again, Jeet Heer and The National Review had teamed up, and questions got answered. Later this year, they will team up again, to solve crimes, NBC, Thursdays, 10 pm.

For many, however, this debate was a massive distraction from the real issues. Because in the same interview, Ted Cruz said James T. Kirk was a better starship captain than Jean-Luc Picard (Captain - USS Stargazer, inventor of the Picard Maneuver, Captain - USS Enterprise) and that is unmistakable horseshit.

Within weeks of Ted Cruz wrapping himself in Rorschach fandom, his opponents realized that Cruz had taken the lead on an important issue to the electorate. It fell to mysterious and reclusive fascist Donald Trump to find a way to one-up Cruz, a challenge Trump met in August with his trademark subtlety and humility.

As usual, it took the other GOP candidates months to race to join Trump at the bottom.

In October, confused weakling Jeb Bush, speaking to an audience in Las Vegas, was asked to name his favorite Marvel superhero. Bush first answered, “I like watching the movies. I wish I owned Marvel, as someone that believes in capitalism.” Yes, Jeb Bush’s favorite Marvel superhero is Marty Goodman. Realizing a little late that this might be too obscure, Bush tried to course-correct and tell audiences his favorite Marvel superhero was Batman, but then phrased it in a way that made it sound like he didn’t like Batman that much either: “I don’t know, I’m kinda old school. I like the old school guys like Batman, a little dark these days.”

Finally, flustered and genetically stupid, Jeb Bush decided that this was the opportune moment to tell audiences how he’d seen a commercial for the new Supergirl television show and how she’d basically given him a boner in his Bush regions.

“This was way more Presidential to watch than that time that he had an emotional breakdown, in front of children, talking about how even his dad doesn’t love him,” raved Republicans.

Almost immediately after Bush had made these obvious nerd-gaffes, smelling his weakness, dehydrated scare-bimbo Marco Rubio pounced. Rubio issued a campaign video in which he wandered through the darkened back areas of a warehouse, seemingly on his way to the taping of a snuff film, like a scary-for-our-country Goodfellas, and announced along the way that he believed that “probably” Batman could defeat Spider-Man in a fight.

Nor were the decrepit senior citizens running for the Democratic nomination spared the gravity of nerd-dom, either.

Corrupt Wall Street mouthpiece and neoconservative internet darling Hillary Clinton struggled the most, being an ancient creature confused by how e-mail and our other modern tools work. Still, she successfully managed to pander out a “May the Force be with you” at the end of a recent debate, despite plainly not knowing what any of those words meant to the young people whose life force she hungered to feed upon. Presumably she’d been taught to say it by the craven puppeteers who operate her flesh from the shadows.

But temporary grumpus fad and fairy-tale maestro Bernie Sanders? He just went ahead and hired a comic-book retailer to manage his campaign.

Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver—either a tiny, tiny man, or a regular-sized man timidly hiding behind a cartoonishly large podium—is the owner of Victory Comics in Virginia, the self-described “co-discoverer of the Lost Valley Pedigree Collection” (a cache of vintage comic books found on an eBay listing by a “World War II cryptographer” in the best National Treasure movie ever), and statistically speaking, he likely masturbated to drawings of Kitty Pryde at some point in his life, at least if the latest numbers from the Rand Corporation are to be believed.

It explains the Sanders for President motto: “You going to buy that? This country isn’t a library.” I never understood that before.

Yes, the Sanders campaign wasn’t just promising people empty talk about being a fan of Batman or Rorschach or Tatsuya Egawa’s Golden Boy, as was true with the GOP candidates. With Sanders and Weaver, voters could imagine a government where Cabinet officers would walk into the Oval Office and find an irritating gaggle of acned teenagers and creepy adult men playing Magic the Gathering.

Finally, a political campaign, but with the ethics of the comic book industry.

Coincidentally, by December, the Clinton campaign would accuse the Sanders campaign of “stealing millions of dollars worth of information about potential voters.”

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