Just a couple pix of the crowd outside Midtown Comics (Times Square store) this morning. There were about three dozen lined up by 9am and by the time they opened it was like 100.

Please note: the guy holding multiple copies is a Midtown employee playing hype man. Midtown had a strict 1 COPY PER PERSON policy. I had to reiterate this in numerous over the past week — which I tried to lighten by saying “Even if Obama himself shows up, he can only get 1 copy”, probably to no effect.

Beyond the fact that Marvel didn’t print anywhere near enough copies for the demand, there are a couple other things that strike me as crazy about this whole media circus:

1) Obama only appears in the five page back-up.

2) OBAMA DOES NOT EVEN LOOK LIKE OBAMA. I realize this was probably a last minute idea on Marvel’s part — and a fairly brilliant one at that — but could they not find someone who could do 5 pages AND draw Obama?? Sorry Todd Nauck, but that is NOT cutting it. This is one time when it would’ve been better to have somebody do severe photo-referencing or even Greg Land style tracing. I mean, now you’re gonna have tons of casual fans pick the book up and see this unrecognizable Barack Obama. I’d be embarrassed.

3) The first guy in line was apparently there at 6AM! And it was probably like under 20 degrees at that time!

Also FYI, the 2nd printing will be available January 21st.