It's clobberin' time! How else to explain yesterday's midday appearance, down in the Pentagon basement, of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (normal human strength, no known superpowers), wedged between Spider-Man and Captain America, trying his best to melt that icy glare of his into a boy-am-I-glad-you-guys-showed-up kind of smirk?
Either Marvel Comics is really hard up for readers and needs an ultra-dynamic, Pentagon-heavy publicity gimmick to boost its sales, or Rumsfeld is finally ready to admit that only a superhero can extricate us from Iraq.
The official explanation for this partnership (The Titanic Three? The Terrific Trio?) is this: Marvel Comics has created a custom "Support Our Troops" comic book starring the New Avengers and the Fantastic Four for "America Supports You," a Defense Department campaign. One million copies will be distributed to service members in the United States and overseas.
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Yesterday's news conference unveiling the comic book had less of the KOOM! thrill and more of the Santa Claus-comes-to-the-mall feel. Hundreds of Pentagon employees brought their children down to the commercial mini-mall in the basement to "Meet the Superheroes," as the event was billed. Rumsfeld, after urging the young crowd to be "quiet, very quiet, very quiet," introduced the superheroes and said he hoped "we all remember what this is about: supporting our troops."
A man dressed in a Spider-Man costume gamely squatted and did that web-squirt thing with his hands dozens of times to pose for photographs, while the Captain America look-alike flexed his muscles and kept his expression deadly earnest. At some point Rumsfeld too did a little muscle flex for the cameras, only he couldn't keep a straight face.
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