Here’s the skinny: Washington, D.C. is now completely overrun with the undead. While it’s an option he never wanted to employ, ‘Ba-rot’ has no choice but to wall up the zombie-infested city! The embattled President then makes his way to the nation’s new capital in . . . Honolulu!?

President Evil is the creation of David Hutchison. Previous covers have spoofed Army of Darkness, 28 Days Later, and classic zombie movies.

Curious? We were, too! That’s why we went out and got a five-page preview, which you can see in its full glory below.

Also, to round out your collection of Obama-themed merchandise, make sure to check out t-shirts with the “Yes We Cannibal” graphic.

What do you think? Are you a fan of President Evil? Post below!

The original V (circa 1984) had all the same storyline and plot twists as this new high-gloss, big-budget series premiere–but back then, it was very clear that Marc Singer, Faye Grant, and friends were battling a regime of space-lizards who, for all their promises of good will, were clearly classic Nazi-inspired sci-fi fascists. But a few choice buzzwords peppered throughout the update made it pretty clear what sort of evil Elizabeth Mitchell and Scott Wolf are facing:

Whether this is truly a sign of the “red scare” over Obamamania creeping into geek entertainment or just a sensitive Obamamaniac reading too deep into his primetime entertainment is unclear. We could get a midseries twist, a la BSG, where viewers have to wonder whether the Visitors are, in fact, the heroes of the piece (of course, for now, it is safe to assume they’re bad). For now, I am just curious to see how the show plays out in the ratings, as liberal and conservative viewers alike should be able to find aspects of this show to like–and the same aspects will appeal to those with oposing political and social philosophies differently. For instance, how will Joel Gretsch’s conflicted priest character play to religious conservatives compared with how he comes across to an atheist or agnostic viewer? Will his faith hold strong against the aliens, or will he have to give up his beliefs in order to battle the Vs? Controversial, button-pushing, debate-worthy entertainment like this is what water coolers were made for (well, after the “cooling water” thing).

Consider my perspective as an Obama voter who has started to see some cracks in the president’s polished veneer. It would be naiive to ignore the many shades of gray that play into DC politics–the special interests, the rule by committee, the cult of personality that drives the media, and the clash of personalities that stalls so much of any president’s agenda as it stumbles, in bits and pieces, one item at a time, through Congress and Senate. BUT for a black-and-white sci-fi take on how things could backfire for those of us who jumped on the Obama band wagon with both feet, V has some genuine scare power.

This isn’t all that the show is about, as the presence of the Visitors on Earth is (slightly) more complicated than just a pretty face charming the masses. It’s likely the show will quietly move away from so much potentially alienating (pun intended) anti-Obama rhetoric in favor of more general aliens bad, humans good tropes. Of course, if the Dems drop even more sharply in popularity while the series is still  in production and ratings demand it, we could see Elizabeth Mitchell donning a pair of Tina Fey glasses, putting lipstick on her pig, and shooting Vs from a helicopter in the season finale!

I definitely enjoyed this comic, despite some clunky pacing and scene transitions throughout that nearly threw me out of the story, and the unfortunately unavoidable confusion in identifying characters as drawn by multiple artists.  Aside from these small negatives, I found the story engaging and my own imagination was triggered when I closed the book–always a big plus for any creative experience.

The premise is very simple: the leader of a team of government sanctioned superheroes decides to expose the corruption of his country’s leaders rather than continue to be a pawn in their attrocities around the world. The plot is not particularly complicated or even original, for that matter, considering the anti-government superhero motif running through other more popular comics in  the early 00′s–The Authority comes to mind, and later The Ultimates. But the details of the execution and the timing of the original release give Cla$$war a dangerous, renegade edge that I regret missing out on during the book’s first publication. Williams doesn’t tell the story of his own British government–he sets his hero’s crisis in America. In fact, his hero is named The American. And the American isn’t rebelling against some fictional comic-book America–he’s lashing out at George W. Bush, Bush Sr., and the very real and scary notion of Cowboy America training its military might on the rest of the world in order to remain dominant.

Rather than using elements of our real world to “deconstruct” the super hero genre, Williams uses super heroes to deconstruct our real world. Remember–this comic was first published shortly after 9/11, but not so soon after the tragedy that the world was still blindly in love with the U.S. of A. I was able to transport transport myself to that very emotional, confusing time, and regain that sense of frustrated impotence I felt as a corrupt government led by a president I already considered a fraud after the compromised 2000 election cashed in every bit of post-9/11 good will and manipulated Americans’ blind patriotism in order to execute a decades-old plan to destabilize the middle east. Whether Williams meant it or not, this is the subtext for Cla$$war. (Of course, the comic manages to never once mention Al Quaeda, terrorism, or the World Trade Center. I’d love to read a “Lost Years” chapter on how these things, along with the entire Clinton presidency and 2000 election, fit into the Cla$$war world.)

The super-powered characters in Cla$$war are the standard archetypal super team–cyphers for established, familiar comic characters, only with a slight enough twist to make them “new.” The American is an amalgam of Superman and Captain America. Icon is their Wonder Woman, an intriguing character who begs for further development. Heavyweight is the requisite big muscle, and also something of a dated black stereotype (he’d also benefit from further development). Burner is the team’s sociopath who gets a not-so-secret thrill out of using his violent powers. And rounding out the team is Confusion, probably my favorite of the bunch, more a tool of the others than a whole person herself–she has a powerful form of telepathy that allows her to control other people’s minds, yet never thinks to turn that power on her abusive masters. The team is called Enola Gay, after the ship that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima in 1945.

As the story goes, the U.S. perfected its own super soldier program, fueled by old Nazi science, around the time of the first Gulf War, and Uncle Sam has been sending out its squad of manufactured persons of mass destruction to take care of business ever since. Much of this “business” is left off the page, suggested, as are any details of the mysterious cabal of “friends” pulling the strings of puppet president Bush. In fact, so much of Williams’ story is told between the pages and panels, before the story begins and implied by how it ends, that Cla$$war begs to be expanded into a an ongoing series. What could be dismissed as thin  storytelling if these six issues were left as the end-all of the story, should be the opening act in a larger-scale epic. It is obvious Williams has more story to tell, and whether it is in comic form or on film, I’m looking forward to seeing his vision of the future for America and the American.

Willaims mentioned in a December 2008 blog post that he worries that his comic may be dated now that Barack Obama has been elected into a new era of hope and change and kittens for everyone. However, I wonder if this is exactly the sort of twist a second volume to the series could use to spice things up, playing into the hopelessness of the politics and government at its core. The bright-eyed champion of hope steps in to fill the seat of Bush Jr., who was humiliated and humbled over the course of volume one, only to learn that he too must answer to a higher power–the puppet-master shadow government. This looks like a job for Enola Gay!

Never missing an opportunity to get some easy press for one of his products, Peter Moore recently issued a response on his official blog stating that “it may be time for the president and his family to put their Wii to good use and fire up the 30-day challenge with EA Sports Active.”

Not wanting to let Obama’s signature slogan go to waste, Moore added “Mr. President, here is my challenge to you: Try EA SPORTS Active and I guarantee you’ll need aides saying “Yes You Can!” to finish your first workout.”

Gotta love the guy.