Donald Trump has now been in the White House for a full year, so it’s time to look back at some of the key moments in the life of the 45th president of the US. Remember when Luke Cage picked up that limo in New York and none other than Trump was inside? No? How about when he took on the global zombie problem? Not ringing any bells? But you can’t possibly forget the time when Trump appeared as a giant head with teeny-tiny arms and legs and designated himself MODAAK (Mental Organism Designed As America’s King), can you??
If none of these memorable appearances mean anything to you, you’re obviously spending too much time reading the Guardian and not enough reading comics. For Trump is not just a gift to the army of political cartoonists who’ve made hay with the president in newspapers over the last year, but has been appearing in comics since long before the start of his political career.
That aforementioned Luke Cage incident happened in Marvel’s New Avengers in 2008, when the musclebound Hero for Hire helpfully shifted Trump’s car out of the way so an emergency ambulance could get past. Then, Trump was merely known the host of hit reality TV show The Apprentice, but he does, of course, spend his page threatening to sue Cage for messing with his wheels.
Since the 1980s, Trump Tower has appeared alongside fictional architectural additons to the New York skyline such as the Fantastic Four’s Baxter Building and the Avengers Mansion, with Iron Man’s well-heeled alter ego Tony Stark once remarking in a 1988 comic that he used to own a floor in Trump Tower.
But it’s Marvel that has had most fun with Trump over the years; possibly a tad surprising, as Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter is an old friend and informal adviser to Trump. But the aforementioned MODAAK is never actually confirmed as being Trump in Spider-Gwen, even if the resemblance is rather startling. Yes, the character’s big head, orange skintone and undersized hands are based on the long-running Marvel villain MODOK – but the fit is perfect.
Other comics companies have not ignored the potential of Trump as a larger-than-life character. British science fiction weekly 2000AD predicted his rise back in 2012, in the strip Zombo – actually, in Al Ewing and Henry Flint’s comic, Trump is president of Earth, not just the US (so there’s that to look forward to). In DC Comics’ John Constantine, the streetwise, Liverpudlian mage created by Alan Moore makes reference to “a racist, short-fingered, failed meat salesman … circling the White House” in last year’s reboot The Hell Razer.
I know what you’re thinking: where are all the comics that don’t portray Donald Trump as a psychotic, grotesque megalomaniac with his finger hovering above the nuclear button? Well, there is one. It was released in 2011, when Trump had his sights on the 2012 US presidential election. Then, nobody was taking his political ambitions very seriously, aside from a company called Bluewater, which put out a graphic biography called Political Power: Donald Trump. Bluewater’s president Darren Davis said at the time: “We’re trying to portray him less as a caricature and more as potential leader of the free world.”
It’s the satirists and caricaturists who have won the battle when it comes to Donald Trump’s portrayal in comics, perhaps most satisfyingly in Robert Sikoryak’s The Unquotable Trump, which marries genuine quotes from the president with apt reimaginings of classic covers. Sikoryak riffs off the cover of the first issue of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen, with the iconic smiley-face badge sporting a Trumpish quiff next to the quote: “Don’t be afraid. We are going to bring our country back. But certainly, don’t be afraid.” (A direct quote from Trump’s first television interview as president-elect a year ago.)
It might be Trump’s lot to be cast as villain. Interestingly, he’s never made a “real-life” appearance as the current president in Marvel comics, something past presidents such as Barack Obama did, but perhaps that’s not something Trump will be very exercised about. As the man himself said in an interview with Michael Gove: “Well, I don’t like heroes. The concept of heroes is never great.”
