Jay Cochran over at ToyNewsI was a little worried about this strip’s Challenger explosion reference. Even though the reference was just the setting of the joke, not the source of the joke, it was still a potential yikes! Substituting some other sad topic for a national memorial service would have only been a lateral move, so hey, here it is on my own site, where we have no such standards.
So now that you’ve peaked, what do you intend to do in comics?
I don’t know. Clearly it’s all downhill from here.
Haha, took me a second to remember that Lex Luthor was President for a while. This is….this is just really great. I keep imagining this scene with more and more detail and it just gets better and better.
Took me a little bit to figure out the joke too and work for a comic book news sight. I’m like, “when did Lex plot to blow up a Space Shuttles? Even in the silver age that’s small time for him. What why is he there and so happy about it?”
I am in -love- with this. I want an entire series! Former President Lex “Orange Lantern” Luthor opens his Presidental Museum! FPL”OL”L does PSAs for Haiti! POL”OL”L goes on The Daily Show to promote his new book!
Needless to say, the exact same pose each time. It’s mandatory.
Wait…if Disneyland bans him from the Hall of Presidents because he’s a DC character what does he do?
What about Martin Sheen and John Goodman from THE WEST WING?
Bush II was never President in DC. Luthor was elected in his place :p [and they kept with fictional presidents after he was gone, as I recall]
So far, there have been Pete Ross (took over after Luthor’s impeachment), Horne (elected in the next election, killed during Amazons Attack, IIRC), and Horne’s unnamed replacement.
Obviously the unnamed replacement wiill sponteneously combust and take out half of the white house in flames.
In the 2008 election in the DC Universe, Democrat Martin Suarez was elected over Republican Bob Ridgeway.
… Y’know, I’d completely forgotten about Decisions.
Perhaps ‘blocked it from my mind’ would be better phrasing…
Well, I’m a couple issues behind on Freedom Fighters, so something may have happened to the president himself, but his veep’s been kidnapped and tortured already, so…
Wait, where’s Regan? Isn’t he sorta not dead in the Shortpacked Universe?
Showing up at such an event would kind of blow his cover: http://www.shortpacked.com/category/comic/book-4/01-of-presidents-and-randomness/
Is that the same reason FDR doesn’t show up?
Honestly, I think this joke is a riot. I could understand the uber-politically correct crowd getting pissed, but anyone who understand the reference and is a fan of DC comics is going to love this.
So I’m assuming one of those guys is the badly-written president from the Amazon Attack period, right? You know the guy who was a pot-shot allegory of Bush Junior, and who decided concentration camps for woman who have interacted with Amazons are a good idea… And… I gotta stop, because that story still pisses me off on multiple levels.
Which, I also have to ask… I vaguely remember that stupid “Decisions” storyline where they turned Jericho evil again as he tried to kill off presidential canidates, but I’m kinda vague on what the president looks like in the current books. Did they say who won the election and if so, have the ‘retconned’ the president to be Obama or at least look like him?
That entire story-line was so goddamn stupid. I don’t care if they all are personal friends of Wonder Woman, crazy Amazons attack DC and kill the army and civilians, it’s time to stop pussy-footing around and start taking action. Say what you will about the Secret Invasion, but pretty much every single superhero in that storyline was wallowing in the entrails of their Skrull enemies.
That storyline was stupid in more ways than I can count. To make the plot work, everybody had to be holding the idiot ball, and nobody could react to anything in a way that any person actually would.
Well, some presidents go through a rough patch, and some glow orange and go batshit crazy.
Luthor went batshit crazy LONG before the orange glow – he was actually quite lucid while all avariced up (just, you know, greedier than usual), unlike when he was juiced on Kryptonite-enhanced Venom. Of course, having lost his life to kryptonite once before, and knowing what Venom does to a person, he had clearly gone off his nut to get to that point in the first place.
I literally bursted into laughter when I read this getting strange looks at the College Library.
Really? TNI needs to grow a pair. It’s just the same crowd of people that looks at Shortpacked! every week. It’s not like this strip would get picked up by the AP and cause raging fury across the country.
The fact that I’m currently watching ‘superman/batman public enemies’ RIGHT as I read this makes the lulz even lulzier.
Seriously, I come back here every hour or so just to look at this comic and it /never/ stops being funny.
I just love how uncomfortable those other presidents look!
It’s a thing of beauty.
In my mind he turns to Clinton and says, with the same expression but in a perfectly normal voice, “I’m really very sad.”
I almost sprayed coffee all over my monitor when I read this yesterday. It would have been funny enough just with Lex in his normal green battlesuit, but the orange lantern getup and expression just takes it straight over the top.
Bravo, Mr. Willis.
…but where’s President Rickard?
Wandering the multiverse, looking for Americas to fix.
Wish he’d get to ours.
Heh. That face. That face is wonderful.