Outside the Beltway

Trump Comics

An odd phenomenon.

James Joyner
8

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Our roving Pacific Coast Correspondent sent me this image:

Looking to find a source for attribution aside from the @RichRagsdale* (I found it posted here), I stumbled down a rabbit hole of Trump-themed takeoffs of classic comic book covers.

The Unquotable Trump depicted the U.S. president’s recreations on comic book covers and featured his own words.

I’m not sure what to make of it, to be honest, but it’s interesting. I don’t recall seeing this sort of thing with previous Presidents but I suspect they’re out there.

It turns out that Trump did appear in Iron Man #227 back in 1986.

*UPDATE: Ragsdale’s Instagram has all manner of comic book spoofs, many of them Trump-based.

UPDATE 2: Readers point to some historical examples but they’re of a decidedly different genre.

The January 1964 issue of Action Comics (issue 309) came out the week after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

It features this now hopelessly naive panel:

This LBJ parody from Parallax Comics come out in 1966:

But it’s hardly as biting as the Trump examples.

And DC Comics itself put out this cover in June-July 1972:

Ironically, that coincided with the Watergate break-in but nobody would have known that when the issue was commissioned.

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8 responses to “Trump Comics”

  1. Mu Yixiao Avatar
    Mu Yixiao

    I love the fact that they went to the trouble of distressing the edges to make them look old. 😀

    1
  2. Mister Bluster Avatar
    Mister Bluster

    I don’t recall seeing this sort of thing with previous Presidents but I suspect they’re out there.

    You mean like this?

    Nixon

  3. Matt Bernius Avatar
    Matt Bernius

    @Mister Bluster:
    Nixon was the (never officially named) villain of the 1970’s Captain America story “The Secret Empire” – https://www.cbr.com/captain-america-secret-empire-president-nixon/

    There was also the “X-Presidents” “underground” comic from Robert Smigel. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/726482.X_Presidents

  4. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    Not a comic book, but in Dick’s novel “VALIS,” taking down Nixon was explicitly claimed as an action by the savior (or something).

    Given a history that includes people much worse than Nixon, not to mention many of his contemporaries, this seems a little like overkill.

    Oh, in the animated version of a Batman comic, The Dark Knight Returns, there’s an appearance by Reagan. He sends Superman to take care of Batman.

  5. CSK Avatar
    CSK

    There’s a comic somewhere involving JFK and Superman.

    The thing about the Trump comics, though, is that they uniformly make him look not like a villain, which would at least have some stature, but like the churl and boob he really is.

  6. Andy Avatar
    Andy

    Glad to see that high-quality political satire and trolling aren’t dead.

  7. CSK Avatar
    CSK

    @Andy:

    All hail Thomas Nast, the father of political cartoons.

    3
  8. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    I’d be open to set up a go-fund-me page to pay the artists to actually produce the comic books, so they can then be donated to the Cheeto Benito presidential library.

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