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Barack Obama has appeared in at least two comic series since his arrival on the national stage.Back in September the superhero Savage Dragon took it upon himself to endorse Obama for president, and days before his inauguration, Spider-Man saved the day for the 44th president by defeating an Obama imposter.While Savage Dragon is an overly muscular green humanoid, Spider-Man is a real, live human being. And, like Superman and Batman and Captain America and Flash and Wonder Woman, the Web Crawler has a common trait among comic strip superheroes:He's white. Since their inception, there have been only a few black superheroes in comic books, and fewer still have achieved mainstream appeal.But Obama's rise to the presidency now has many people in the business of creating and marketing heroes hoping that a black superhero will finally break into mainstream pop culture.Marvel Comics, home of Spider-Man, The Hulk, Iron Man and the X-Men, is keeping up with the times. The company recently announced the untold story of the first Marvel superhero of color in the "Adam: Legend of the Blue Marvel" project. The Black Panther, another Marvel mainstay, will undergo a life-altering new storyline and will be featured in an animated series.Whether any of these developments will mean more big screen time for black superheroes will be up to Marvel readers."While we're always looking to represent characters from all walks of life, at the end of the day the most important thing is crafting good stories-that's what people are going to respond to," said executive editor Tom Brevoort.That reader response, for black comic artists in particular, could carry larger sociological implications."I figure, the more you see us in a different light, the more doors that open up for African-Americans," says Jerry Craft, the award-winning creator of the Mama's Boyz comic strip, which chronicles the life of an African-American woman raising two teenage sons. The strip has been syndicated by King Features since 1995.Craft is one of three black comic-strip artists who offered FOXNews.com exclusive drawings of what they would like a black superhero to look like...By S.E. Cupp
As in the days of Noah....
