good morning, everyone, and welcome to the white house historical association and our 2023 symposium, the white house in popular culture hosted by the association and good friends, our partners, the john w klug center at the library of congress. my name is stewart mclaurin, and i have the privilege of being the president of the white house historical association. and i see many familiar friends

and faces here today and, of course, those who are joining us by c-span and through our own digital coverage. it's great to have all of you joining us here today as well. i want to recognize three of my colleagues who have been involved and on point for this many here at the association and have played a role in making today happen in these annual symposiums, which they're actually a year long effort to put together. we start with a colloquium of scholars in the fall and focus on a topic or a subject with our partner in this case, the clergy center. and then that evolves over the course of the year and culminates in this wonderful symposium that you're gathered us here today to enjoy. the three colleagues that i would like to recognize specifically today for their leadership is dr. colleen brogan, who is the senior vice president and director of the david m rubenstein national center for white house history.

and we're very excited. colleen has been nominated by president biden to be the next archivist of the united states who actually came. and. we are hopeful that there will be senate confirmation soon and we will hate to miss her. she has contributed a significant amount to our success the past three plus years here, and she's not going very far. as you all know, we have a a close in relationship with the national archives, particularly our wonderful friends at the presidential libraries, which we all enjoy. dr. matthew costello is our senior historian, is in the back here and matt has been very involved and we will be hearing from him later today as part of this program. and my colleague grace mccaffrey has been in of every logistical element of pulling this together and making it happen. and makes me really happy when i don't have to worry about any of those things. so, grace has done a wonderful

job with that. so thank you. well, now we have a very special moment. we have a video greeting from the chairman of the board of directors of the white house of oracle, associate it is the white house hysterical association's that the chairman of the board of the white house historical association, the john or the honorable john f.w. rogers. good morning, everyone. my name is john rogers and serve as the chairman of the board of directors of the white house historical association. and although i can't be with you in person, i know that you're to have an interesting day ahead with. the engaging speakers and conversations over how the white house and popular intersect. i had the privilege of working in the white house across two different administrations. but mainly during the reagan years. as you undoubtedly know, reagans starred in many movies, and they loved watching movies, particularly at camp david. they enjoyed watching classic films such as singing in the rain and stagecoach, but they

never missed the chance to view the latest hit like e.t. and raiders of the lost ark and the karate kid. president reagan implicitly understood that presidents need to remain in touch with what's popular in the country. and he certainly did that through film, movies and other forms. popular culture offer insights into who we are as americans and also who we aspire to be. i hope you are looking forward to hearing from more of our speakers today about this dynamic and popular culture shapes our perspectives of the presidency and. the people who've held that office. finally, i'd like to thank our partners from the john clooney center at the library of congress. both of our organizations are committed to the study and the preservation of history, as well as supporting new research and

programing that inform and educate the public. the association's symposium offers us this unique opportunity every year to connect and inspire people. to learn more about the white house and its larger cultural significance as a symbol our democracy. you again for joining us at the decatur house, and i hope you enjoy the day. thank you to john is our chairman and also like recognize carla hayden the librarian of congress who serves as an ex-officio member of our board of directors for her leadership over the entire library. system as part of our partnership today as john mentioned the white house historical association and the clooney center have much in common. we also share beliefs. in making history more accessible and more available and relevant to audiences.

and we are very grateful for this partnership. today's symposium explores the relationship between presidency. the white house and popular culture. for many people, their only interaction with the white house and the president see is through popular mediums such as television, films, comics, cartoons and other such very familiar outlets. because of this popular culture holds an important role in our society. not only for entertainment purposes, but for informing its audiences and shaping their understanding of our country's institutions. today's panel and if you've seen the program, it's a really robust and exciting panel of presenters. they will discuss a variety of perspectives and, include historians, entertainment industry experts, actors and scholars. and they will discuss how the presidency and the white house

shapes popular culture and how the public understands these institutions. today's lunch that you walk by and saw a glimpse of actually going to be beautiful in the setting today. and it's going to give a little hat tip to a pop culture moment that's happening this weekend. we've all seen the it's hard to miss coronation of the king that will take place tomorrow and certainly there's a great amount of history and synergy between the monarchs of the united kingdom and the royal family and the presidents of the united states and the white house. so there's going to be a fun tribute in the fair and the menu items and in the celebration of the lunch time together that pays tribute to the coronation. i'm actually wearing my little commemorative coronation pin today to participate in the pop culture moment and i hope some of you have had the opportunity to see my podcast that was released just today with dame

karen pierce, who's the current ambassador of the united kingdom to the united states. she is extraordinary. and i had the privilege of just listening to her and i think you will enjoy her comments on the special relationship and the coronation as well, and that's available on our website. well, i have a few sort of housekeeping reminders before we dive in our white house history shop is open throughout the day, and as our special guests, you will receive a 10% discount if you go in there and tell them you're here for the symposium. our parting gift for you today be an issue of our white house history quarterly. and this one is a private ish issue. the white house and television i know many of you already subscribe to. so if you have this issue, take this one and give it to a friend. our and this one in particular, our quarterly magazine. one of the favorite things of mine at the association, it goes to the very beginning of our

mission with mrs. kennedy in 1961, when just a year later, she had us publish our very first guidebook. and that was the first publication. and now we produce award winning publication ways that are deep and rich and scholarly and wonderful for you to enjoy yourselves as well as give to others the next issue, which will be out in early june, every that comes out, i tell marcia anderson, our chief publishing officer, and her staff that it's better than the one before and the one that's coming out in june is going to be on the white house in new york. and it is fantastic. you don't want to miss that one at the conclusion, today's wonderful presenters and panels. we will have a reception out in the courtyard and i hope everyone will stay. enjoy that time of fellowship together. so my contribution to today's program is complete. i'll get off the stage and let the festival this begin. i want to thank the clergy once again. my colleagues and most

importantly, all of you. your participation, engagement with us on these important topics is very important and encouraging to us in our work. and for every one of you that sits here today, there are thousands more. follow us online. our social digital resources friends such as c-span. and if someone in your life doesn't yet know about the work of the white house, historical association, please introduce them. to us, there are so many great and wonderful causes out there in the world, and i know many of you are supporting hospitals and universities and community groups and organizations, but there's one white house and that belongs to all of america and all of the american people. and your support for that, given our nonprofit it and nonpartisan status, makes we do possible. so thank you very much. and with that, i would like to welcome very good friend hannah sommers, who is representing the library of congress today. she is the associate librarian

and resource for research and collection services at, the library of congress. and they are an extraordinary, historic institution that our country and our congress cannot do without. so, hana, i'll turn it over to you. good morning, everyone. it's really to be here. thank you for that introduction. and stuart mentioned i'm hannah sommers. i am still new associate librarian for researcher and collection services at the of congress and i want to welcome you today to the wonderful symposium on the white house in popular culture, which is a joint effort between the john w quigley center at the library and our host today the white house historical association. the kluge center is integral part of our efforts, research and collection services to build

and steward the collections. the library of congress, and just as importantly, to help facilitate access to those collection pens by researchers from around the world. we have an important mission at the library to engage to, inspire and to inform congress and the american people with a universal and enduring source of knowledge and creativity. the john w quigley center helps us fulfill that mission. it's a vibrant, scholarly center on capitol hill that brings world class research authors from the united states and abroad to energize one another, to distill wisdom from the library's rich resource is, and to interact with policymakers and the public. the center offers opportunities. senior scholars and postdoctoral, to do research in the library. congress collections. it also offers free public

lectures, conference, acs and symposia, including one that helps sow the seeds. today's event many of the ideas and historical insights being discussed today were first presented during a scholarly hosted at the jefferson building at the library last november. the library of congress delighted to be part of today's event, and i encourage everyone to come visit the library and register for a reader card if you don't already have one and spend some time exploring the resources of the world's largest library to begin today's program, i'd like to introduce dr. kevin butterfield wald, who is the director of the clearview center, and he's the moderator of our first panel, which is on the president's see in comics and cartoons. so kevin. thank you because the is.

30 media. okay, come on up. yes, welcome my great pleasure to moderate our first panel. we're going to be exploring the white house in both comics and cartoon scenes from george washington's time, 2 hours, the ways in which we have used prints and other forms of media to reach and to shrink the distance between the american people and our political leaders are things that we can explore an obviously it's both entertaining and enlightening to do. so i don't want to say all that much to introduce our panel because their biographies are in the program that you have in front of you. we will be moving from chronologically more or less from sara duke to to jesse holland, all of whom have a close connection to the library

of congress. i'm proud to say sara duke works there, as does megan and jesse actually spent a good amount of time as a distinguished visiting scholar at the center. he's also a distinguished journalist and journalism professor. so let me hand things over. i believe actually have the clicker so there's not much you do without this. let me hand things over to sarah to begin our exploration of the white house in comics and cartoons. sarah thank you. kevin and i must express my gratitude for being invited to speak to you today. i sara duke and. in 1972, just six days after the watergate. break in her blog, the editorial cartoons for the washington post drew this editorial cartoon featuring footsteps leading away from the white house. he had already drawn two editorial cartoons featuring the physical appearance of richard nixon and implicating him in the break in. so why draw ite house?

that's what we're going to explore today. but let's go back to a moment in time as we're celebrating the coronation of charles, author. tomorrow, i'm going to remind that we fought a war. and this is the sacking of washington in 1840 and 109 years ago. the white house historical association owns the original drawing for this. but the library congress has the only william strickland engraving from it. benjamin latrobe was given a unique opportunity to rebuild the white house in a new way with that lovely colonnade on the southern facade and i apologize. this is rather hard to see, but this is a collection that's near and dear to my heart because i'm processing it now and it's john ruben smith and he traveled up and down the eastern seaboard documenting the new in drawings

and prints prints. when one thinks of daguerreotypes, one thinks of aps dead ancesto o somebody else's dead ancestors. but daguerreotypes a feature buildings and landscapes. and this is white house in 1846. and while the northern cade was depicted less regularly in prints, perhs because it was a less grand, here's a image from a calendar in 1822. so i'm laying the groundwork. this is what the building looks like by the 1840s. everybody comes, know what the building looks like and. it doesn't need to be labeled. so when william henry harrison, who perhaps had the longest 19th century election campaign and the shortest presidency ran, he didn't to label the white house it's there as part of his destination and that's what happens in lithograph editorial

cartoons. at the beginning, the white house is a destination poll. pork running for president c it's a foot race. but again, the white house is a destination destination, uh, courier. and it is when. you think of courier and you think of bucolic landscapes. they did lot of editorial cartoons. they had political opinion and their opion was that horatio's see more governor in new york was the man for president, not ulysses grant, who was they depicted dragging thchicago atform across an abyss. we all know how that turned out because we don't remember who horatio seymour is. during the american civil war, the white house becomes part of the emblematic patriotism of preserving the union. and so it appears on a lot of civil war envelopes. civil war envelopes have a huge

collection of them. there, really pictorial. and they are deserving of research. if anybody wtso delve into them. we literally have volumes of civil war envelopes. so white house destination, white house as patriotic symbol. so why am i showing you the west side? because by the middle and late 19th century, the facade that's depicted tells the story of what the content of the cartoon kids and the first story that gets told is the presidency becomes important, that there are spoils to be had and those spoils come out of the side, oh, come out of the front. nobody's going to take wealth out of a main entrance. so it's the side of, the building that gets depicted.

and part magazine, it was a week publication and about the 1850s to 1917 side spoils of presidency, it's the side. want to know. cleveland is thinking you go to the side. well, why why doesn't the side appear on editorial cartoons anymore? and i think that is because we don't associate spoils with the presidency anymore. in my transition from four sides i'm just bringing you this. teddy roosevelt, he's li a train wreck running h own hand, chosen to taft, who is than life squashing in the white house. well that gave wilson the entry right. and speaking of wilson, we're getting into the south facade. it is my argument. and it's now 100% of the time it

my argument that when the south facade is it's the personality the president that's the issue now you're going but that's not the white house. no, it's not the white house. it's a summer house. it's the shadow white house. but it resembles the south facade so spectacularly. and poor president wilson is just trapped by the shadows of all the issues he has to deal with. and he's according to conservative cartoonist john mccutchen of chicago he's t doing it too well. however, when we get to the larger than life presidency of franklin delano roosevelt about oscar caesar of working for the new york times imagines a whit house that's overtake washington as the personnel of the president and strength as a president redraws the map. we get to truman who gave us the white house. we more know and love today and

he's remodeled it. her block the washington post cartoonist us that he's remodeled it but he can't quite fulfill his promise as president because nobody will run with in his first campaign. lyndon baines johnson larger than life. everything's coming up. roses is as it gets to pass legislation and settle issues it's it's almost like a honeymn between him and herb block d we have a great her block editor a cartoon collection of more than 14,000 drawings at the library, in part because mr. got tired of johnson asking for every cartoon that depicted him and just said they're not available. and we have pretty much every cartoon he drew after the day after. the johnson administration cell facade. the tapeardiscovered at 19. the existence of the tapes are discovered in 1973, and edwards saw who's our editor of t

york times depicts smashing into the white house little premature ticks another year jimmy carter american gothic you know he kind of we still think of him as a pe farmer noexecive he w. but this is certainly an image and this by mike peters from the dayton daily. south facade. the savings loan mess with herbert walker bush who just wants it to go away. and now i'm going to switch to the north facade. we talk about the north facade 90% of the time. we're talking about the power of the presidency. and why is that? because the south facade is glorious. everybody knows what it looks like. it's the image that gets depicted to americans. but if you know washington, you know the powers on the north side. so january industrial curve from the franklin delano roosevelt's

administration, everybody's lining up for a patronage this is a wolf that so closely resembles joseph mccarthy. you could call it a caricature of him and it's the white house it's the eisenhower white deflecting mccarthy then another year to go and at her block was no no fan of the way eisenhower treated mccarthy there are plenty of cartoons calling him out for not being strong enough. but here the white house is deflecting him. the bay of pigs this is a conservative cartoonist gib crockett and we now think of the bay of pigs as a successful party on the part of john kennedy against the russians. but crockett wasn't so sure. he thought the chickens had come home to roost. and then i get to turn to the

cartoon in that i introduced the session with andt's block and it's the north facade because he's allenging the corruption in the presidency and the power of the predency during the nin administration, when he drew this cartoon. and it's t about the person reality of the president, he had already done that in the days after the watergate break in, during the reagan administration, cartoonists, when they dealt with the white house tended to depicted callous and cold. and here is alice gary trudeau's charactefrom doonesbury falling asleep in the snow north facade. clinton during his first admistration he hasn't even moved in ye it's inauguration day and other occupants of ady and willing to greet him a whole host of ises we get to his second inauguration and this is all

it.. the cat socks was a recurring character for many years during clinton administration and he was fairly in his comment and the line is e is obliged to spend the next four years fooling all of the p all of the time. and puck, who was elephants, little d, says. oh, i suppose one could always hope for impeachment sidney wilkinson is a pulitzer ing cartoonist fromn. i mean, sorry, from philadelphia. and here's a cartoon that deals with george bush administr and amendment. and second amendments all in one cartoon. and my final cartoon for you is by mark ransom, who's a lo cartoonist working the washington blade. and it's the obama white house

lit up after the ober on. remember this moment? it really happens. you don't need to label white. everybody knows it's the white house and i know i've gone quickly through this. so if you want a slide set pdf version of my slide set with all the links to the cartoons or if you want to ask me questions after, the presentation, i'd be happy to answer them. you can grab me at lunch or at the afters. i'll be around all day, but you can also us through our ask a librarian service. and of the 17.6 million images and the prints and photographs division of the library of congress, if digitized, 1.5 million and 1.4 million are available to you because they're in the public domain to download free of charge and with that i pass it to my colleague megan halsband from the serials division. hi everyone. my name megan halsband. i am a reference librarian in the newspaper and current

periodical reading room at the library and i have the great fortune being able to work with the comic book collection at the library because it's considered a serial. so it goes along with newspapers. there's actually a quite a long history comics and newspapers. for those of you not familiar with the history of comics, most of the early comics in the 1930s actually started out as reprints of newspaper strips, some of which you know, you've seen from sarah's presentation what i'm going to talk about today is kind of the. push and pull of the white house as, a real place in comics and as an education and comics, as an educational resource and then comics as a fantasy, as an escape, as an, you know, idealistic representation of what we could be. and then my colleague jesse will

take over for that. but you know what? this is an image from a comic we recently acquired called seeing and i put it in because the comic itself functions as a tourist sort of object for. dc it features the white house, features the library of congress not going to like, and you're going to hear me shamelessly plug the library's collections to get you to come and use the collection. there's so much here. i had a time picking what to actually show you, so just be aware that this is a very selective group of images from the library's. it has about 107,000 comic book issues and about. 8007 to 8000 titles. so we're one of the largest comic book collections in the world, depending on how you count this particular comic published in 1957 mentions the

white house, a modern location hasn't a bomb shelter in the basement, and several rooms are open to the public. so it invites you to take a look here. u see the cover on the left, you'll various other well-known washington landmar. and so one of the things that i find really fascinating and that's nd of where i nerd out is a lot of comics particularly in this period, but over the cose of comics history present educational topics, present fact facts you know they are instruct, live and engaging. there's even a whole series that designed to there's a number of series that are designed to be representations of contemporary events and historical people, among other things. and so i wanted to kind of highlight that because this is all happening at the same time where we're seeing, oh, here's

two of the series that feature biographical sketches. they're called true comics treasure chest of fun. in fact. they often, you did a biography of individuals here you have dolley madison the treasure ise features a number of presidential wives. the comics also presidents. and we'll get to that in a little bit. but you know, i wanted to show thdiversity of e bjects here because it really isn't just. one thing in all of these. there's a wide rangendt sometimes seems competing with itself. the so true comics, 1941 treasure chest fun, in fact, 1966. so you're seeing a really broad range date range. this continues even into now

where there's biographies of and other you know, comic renditions, real events that i find particularly fascinating. so at the same time that all of this is being published, you also things like action comics, superman and batman. this particular issue from 1958 shows superman in the white house. and so there's tension here between superman as a fictitious character and then a real place of the white house. and so you get that intersection of the real and the fictitious. and here that actually comes out quite a bit in comic books from this period. the it's not explicitly depicted here in this particular image,

but the words itself call it out. and so i think one of the things, as sarah mentioned, you know, the image of the white house is already well-established by this point. people know what that means visually. they know that what when it says white house, that implies the presidency democracy, american political institute and all of those kinds of things. and so it didn't even need to be represented here in order for people to be able to envision that. at the same time, this is a slightly later issue. superman b the president. so again a like implication of thwhe housend superman, the he's actually having identity crisis on the right panel here. it says, i am a rich i,h man, a poor man, a regular man, or the president of the united. and so 's actually kind of interesting and i think that there's a lot more here that did not have time to take a lo at you know, i didn't focus on the

presidency in comics during this period. there's biographies of presidents. you know, the factual series feature biographies of presidents or other political figures. so that could be a whole other presentation. again, action comics here, superman is the president in the white house and what you'll see is a depiction of the white house here explicitly and then superman rushes to se democracy or in this case, the president and you know, the you've seen three different ways that superman here has interacted wh e white house and the presidency all within a fairly short amount of time, which i was very interesting to me. and that's why i'm highlighting it.

there were many other images. the white house in comics that i was able to find this issue kind of goes a little bit in a different direction where the white house serves a backdrop for a take over by aliens and. so the there's juxtaposition you can't you might not be able to see it very well, but the figures in the front are called dancers and there's a i don't know what the right word is here. it's ancient, i guess, or unsophisticated imagery. that's used here in contrast with the white house as a sophisticated, you know, american location. but it's also slightly critical. the text at the bottom bottom, the here, let me read it. oh, yes, the mandrill knows that

the white house is only a plaster shell, not power in and itself. but he knows, too, that ours is a nation where. image is often included fact in which the president of an office can create its sorry own movement and its own right or its own might in its own right. and so found that very interesting because it's kind of explicitly being critical of. the american political institution while simultaneously using it, represent the thing that we've known that we know about the white house and the visual vocabulary that of that's come through over time. so i had to include this one because it is hilarious to me and i hope you enjoy it. vampire in the white house there

is one thing i can'toh on in this particular talk is the the history of the comics. comics, publishing, d y you get so specific subject matters at specific times. this ptilar you'll see you can see a little stamp size item next to the z and that's the comics code authority seal. an so e mics code authority really changed the what people saw in comic books. and one of the reasons why a lot of the slideth i'm showing yoarfrom the fifties is because superheroes kind of fell out of favor other genre comics rose to the surface, and one of those were sort of educational. this particular one is just i think it's hilarious. it references back to easy comics originally started as educational, one of the first publications by its publisher, bill gaines, was a pictorial of the new testament and a pictorial of the testament.

and so but later, people come to associate his publication with the comics code authority, you know, horror vault of vault of horror, crypt of god. why the and other various horror series and actually image kind of calls back that which i found really interesting this whole camp sort of image. i think that there's a lot that. can be talked about here, but you get the explicit representation of the white house, the mention of the lawn, and then the three various entities under which the we know d talk about the white house and, the presidency and the administrator. and you have white house administration and the naming of the presidentt e same time. and so it's really talking in more broad terms about what the it house means aa larger

and, you know, kind of how that engages. i am running out of time. okay. so the this he climbs out of his coffin. this is in the eighties. so we're moving to the eighties. there's a comics kind of turn darker in the eighties. you get a batman the re-envisioning of batman and the publication of watchmen, which were watchmen was particularly critical of, you know, organized government. the and it kind of calls into question some of the assumptions that were previously made about comics explicitly for children. these comics were not particularly for children. and you'll see. here's a panel fm, watchmen, the figure is actually stand disappears the entire crowd standing in front of the white house and so you get the white

house as a backdrop to power of this individual and there's a wholother talk in that one in and of itself. i wanted to include y the last man as well, because it's actually set in dc. it's a series where there's only one man on earth in, the end, a viruhas wiped everybody else out. and his mother happens to be a member of the us house of representatives. and so he's going here to find his mother, which there's something happening there that i'm not 100% sure about, i want to know more. some of you may be familiar with archie started in 1941, one of the longest running. but so you see the various ways in which the white house and the presidency is represented across a wide variety of co you have historical fact, you have superhero comics, you have and so i wanted to highlight t the difference is there my colleague jesse is going to get

a little bit more into more recent comics, which why i didn't actually include them here today but the i want to invite you to come come to my reading room to come talk to me about comics. i'm i like sarah will be here all day. this is something that i'm particularly excited about and, you know, we'd love to talk to you more, so thank you. good morning. so how do get on the stage? so i am, i was a scholar at the library of congress in the movie center, but before that, i'm a washington, dc history and who, who's my expertise is in slavery inside the white house. i've written books about this. most of the most recent book was the invisibles the untold story of african-american slaves in the white house. and i am currently in preproduction for the document based on that book, which i hope

to have the documentary finished by next year. but before all of that, i was a comic book nerd, so i spent a lot of time in my time with the library of congress trying to go through their comic book collection. i also have an expertise in the depiction of african and comic books in the united states. i've done presentations on that to dc comics and marvel comics going through their own collections and showing how they represent african-american in their own art form, and more recently, i i've been writing for both dc and marvel. i've written two black panther books for marvel. i've written a of comic ok for dc, including a supman comic book which what i was really interested in some of that material. so i'm picking up where we just off. it's interesting many of the current of comic books, which are mostly superhero comic

books, are never actually based in washington, but they make the us government part of their storyline. now we've seen and we saw in the eighties, for example, captain america to washington dc to say president reagan, who had been turned into a snake creature with the captain america saves him so seen the depiction of presidents repeatedly throughout superhero comic books. but the only president who admitted that he was a comic book fan was barack obama. and so the comic book industry just took it and ran where you just saw depictions of barack an books repeatedly, for example, president obama sai was a fan of spider-man. so literally on inauguration day, they were ready to have

peter parker in washington couldt president obama. so they actually did a this is this isn't the actual cover of the comic book. they did a special printing to put barack obama on the cover of the comic book. and they make sure that they did an extra story where spider-man gets to meet president obama. but you will see depictions of the white house and superheroes in comic. this comes. showalled captain america will wield the shield, where you have the current ain erica. stgers coming inside the white house, inside the oval ficend having a conversation with barack obama about, who shou be the next captain america, because captain steve is stepping down now. the choice actends u partner at that time from world

war med cky,hrou the magic of comic books survives world war two b a russian assassin, then an american hero. and then becomes captain america. ironically, a about two years later, marvel comics decides they're going to introduce the first african-american to captain america who becomes sam wilson, who is the current captain america, and continue what he right now and will be the captain america featured in next captain america four new world order, the marvel cinematic universe movie and ironically, next february, i will be writing book about this new captain america that will be available at bookstores everywhere. this ironically, just this is why i. dc comics also make sure they get into the barack obama craziness because they have barack obama here the white

house callut superman to come save america. superman happens to be l another planet at this time and ings are going cra washington. so they put president obama in the white house press room say, rman, where are you? but dc goes, even and turns rack obama into an actual they actually turn barack obama superman. so dc universe, if we know about all the multiple universes now because of spiderman and because of them all of the different things that they do in the cinematic universe. but dc comics was first comic book company to introduce earths, so in one of the first, in fact earth 23, the president is actually calvin ellis, who happens to be a krypton an african-american kryptonian who

was a community and becomes senator. and then it was the elected president just happens to look just like barack obama. well, what actually happened was comic book artist and writer grant morrison debuted this character in another comic book and said, literally, i'm just drawing obama in a superman outfit dc that's a great idea, but this man can't really use barack obama's name. they him calvin ellis and literally put him inside the white as the president. but of course this is an alternate universe. calvin ellis uses. his greatest enemy isn't brainiac or lex luther. they're actually brainiac is computer that runs the white house while he's acting as superman. so dc literally incorporate, barack obama as part of their

universe and this character exists to this day and it's still being used by. dc comics, other comic book companies got involved in this as well. you see youngblood,hich the brainchild of an artist, rob liefeld, you see a savage the,heuthor and creatorf the, savage dractually was one of the few comic book creators to literally endorse. barackadisomic book creation. savage dragon endorse barack aurg actual presidential election. and of course, after oba won, somehow sagogets invites to the white house, which you see in this issue. i'm glad we brought up archie. and archie, because you see here, even in the archie comics, comic books, we see a depiction of the interior of the white house, the oval office, with

barack obama inviting to help solve some of the spending crisis by, of course, more spending. now, comic books are not just fictional. there are several comic books that also are nonfiction. in fact, that's one of the biggest trends in comic books, especially following behind john lewis is march to more nonfiction. so there are several comic books out that were that use the white house and the presidency to depict the actual reality of what's going on in the united states. here are some examples herero blue water where they actually did biographical comic books of rock obama, michelle obama and, even bo bo got his own book. no't want to make it seem like all depictions the white house and president obama were positive. this is one of my favorite

sequences from a comic book called secret war, which wi now see. we're now seeing the marvel cinematic universe starting to adapt. presid obama, just to set this up, president obama is g inside the white house, inside the ova and nick niited. and it just shows in the oval office. no i for those of a marvel cinematic universe fans looking at this picture of nick fury and say, that's not samuel wf or for us older comic book readers, we know that the first depiction of nick fur. so this is the david hasselhoff version of nick fury. the original one, and nick fury up iithouse t the newly elected president obama. that a foreign country is america's supervillains as terrorists. and so he he's to inform

president obama of exactly what's going on. and of the president is not happy that ju shows up uninvited in his office and decides to tell hito d his and he tells him, he tells nick fury that, if you don' respect the office, you'll least respect idt. you should respect the office.ac continuity. nick fury has been around since world war. he reminds him of tof the presidents. he's already, which include eiserun, kennedy, reagan, johnson, nixon. so he'd like, dude, you're new. why would i even respect you at this point? so this was a comic book artist and who were talking about the how new and how naive president obama would be when first started in the at the white

house. dc comics actually does the same thing where they depict president in office trying to figure out how a uesident would actually respond to the first muslim to serve a green lantern. so you see how these comic book writers and artists are trying to use the white house and the presidency to deal with modern problems not just fictional problems, modern problems. and we move to president trump. so with president trump he also in several different comic books and several different ways you seeim from some artists being depicted as uperro we see here the giant sizeduper team up this probably meant to be more satiric cool than anything else because his partners actually vladimir putin so this

is this is president obama president and vladimir putin depicted as a superhero team you actually have some i also nonfictiomicooks that are done using president trump using st prident trump himself has said with different that'ing presented by the hollywood the quotable trump was one of those books i want quid no quid pro quo is another one another example that you see now one of the things we have to keep in mind that comic books are usually written drawn six months in advance. so by the time you see the issue on newsstand, it's about six months away from what the artist was looking and seeing and what the writer intended. so they also made sure, just like they did with president obama, that they did pretty secular nonfiction biography of

esidents. so you see the political power version of the donald trump, the graphic novel which tel the history of president trump. you also see a current version of the that same the same, the one for presidenjoe biden and for the first time for the vice president normally the president is the focus of the the the artists and the writers. but we see that for both the president, the current president and, vice president. but that doesn't mean that they also did not get into the superhero world. so you had trump's titans, which depis president trump as a gun wielding american patriot superhero and course you have biden's titans, which shows him wearing, of course, his gnature sunglass choices and a more slicked out x-men look.

so this is you get to see all of these current and different depictions of the president using the white house, using the presidency. and we can just continue to expect to see more as we move forward, because this is an art form i think, that's going to continue to last for a while. wonderful amazing. i get an opportunity now to field questions from you. there will be microphones to so before you start asking your question, please wait for the microphone to come. you let me get things started as microphones come to the back of the room with a question for you, sarah and megan and jesse, feel free to jump in. but when that great image of the clintons moving into the white house reminded me, as did stewart's introduction of the white house, both as public space and, as private home, could you say a little bit about that? i don't i don't want to call it attention, but dual identity and what you're seeing in editorial cartoons. there's no dual identity. there's no white houses, private

space other than here's the new president arriving at the white house. it's a public space only in an editorial imagination. of course, we know the president lives in the white. but as far as i can tell, it's really just the public aspect of the presidency. and that's the purpose of the editorial cartoon right. the purpose of an editorial cartoon is to express an opinion and persuade you to the artist's point of view. and so they're not to do, oh, there's a new president happy days. somebody else is moving into the white house. no there's problems in america this sucker just took this job and has to deal with it. let me come to the room for questions. so please just give me a quick hand. if you have questions, any of our panelists. i see one in the middle of the front row. where is the microphone? here. here we go. ringer, please.

thank you very much. just a quick question. if we have a lot of the comics recently of depicting trump and biden, obama but in the earlier years of comics were real presidents featured you know not fictional presidents, but actual the presidents not sure when the comics really started making being popular that that you start to see them in there but i'm just curious when they started appearing i'm not sure who would think that would be me? yeah, probably. we'll start with you. yeah. so, yeah. what? i didn't show were so in the library's collection. have a comic called jfk and it's by the publisher dell. i believe it's early sixties. don't quote me on that one, but it's a biography and it's very similar to. the biographies that you've seen that are being published by blue water, the other ones that are coming out where it gives a little backstory, it gives, you know, the rise to the presidency

and then, you know, looks to the future. and there's there's one for lbj reagan actually appears on covers and in what are references to reagan up here and various things i haven't a straight up comic biography of him yet it doesn't mean it's not out there doesn't mean it's not out there but no certainly the fifties and sixties and even the seventies that particularly the publisher dell was doing those kinds of comics where it's just a straight up biography, comic biography, and it kind of ties into some of that educational aspect that is sort of a tension with comic books. and if you want to talk fiction. around world war two was when we were shifting from the weird science western comic books to the superhero style comic books that we see today. and with the original dc

superhero, which wasn't the justice league, it was actually justice society. you saw depictions of president franklin roosevelt who is actually, according to dc comics, a member of the justice society as the man who actually formed the team of dc superhero shows during world war two. so if you go back to the original justice society comic books that depict world two, you'll see quite a few depictions of both president roosevelt, franklin roosevelt and prison and truman which dc continuity around the time of the bombing of of japan was when this super team broke up. but dc comics, which of course is much older than marvel marvel comics, is still like the new kid on the block. if you look at the dc timeline they were depicting presidents far back as franklin roosevelt as part of their fictional universe. now, several of these comic book universes just make up a president. they invent someone to be president. because when you when they do,

you can pretty much be sure that the president's going to be, like assassinated or something usually when a real life president involved in the storyline, of course, the other president will always be rescued and that storyline will be continued later on. so you will see in superhero comic books the real life presidents showing up, going all the way back to world war two other questions. i see one on this side here at the end of the row there you're i have a question that's i've always been fascinated by is probably just in my own head. and it goes it relates to political cartoons. and i always remember when political cartoonists were national figures if we wanted to read the news we read the paper, if we wanted to get opinion we would read columns.

if we wanted to get some forecasting, we'd go to the cartoons even here and noticed a few cartoons that hinted or implicit by the political cartoonist of what might be coming down the road as anybody studied. why, how those i thought brilliant political analysts were able forecast what was coming. you could always remember you could almost skip reading. you look at the cartoon and you could be the smartest person on the block. is there a history behind all that? well, editorial cartoons political cartoons are journalists and tradition. they were part of the news for not so much anymore our current washington post editorial cartoonist lives in halifax canada. so great guy, wonderful artists. but does he have his nose on

what's happening in washington? no, i mean, not my more than he can from our 24 hour news cycle. but when journalists occupied the they were part, you know, on the spot in the time when we weren't living in the 24 hour news cycle, when news was a bit slower, when information traveled less and perhaps a little more accurately so we noticed that with her blog. i mean, he called world war. in 1935. was he prescient? well, he was prescient in the fact that he was paying attention. he was paying attention to the dynamics and how they had shifted in europe and how the bellicose nature of hitler was changing alliances. and so he was he was reading the tea leaves. yes, but he was reading the tea leaves with an awareness of of

power struggles and, shifts that happens a lot less, i think, because they there isn't that interaction with journalists when her blog won his fourth pulitzer prize, it was with ben bradlee, woodward and bernstein for their coverage of the watergate break in. well, how could how could they do that? because they worked together. how could her block call out nixon three days after the break? because the libel laws in this country are so strong that could express his opinion that nixon was involved. but woodward and bernstein couldn't write it down until they had evidence that it was true. and that's the difference. and, yeah. next question. i see one in the back here.

sorry. thank you. great panel. i want to ask about american foreign policy. i mean, foreign policy always seen as such a bastion of, power for american presidents. i'm curious about the correlation between foreign policy and what we see in maybe comic books is there a correlation? is it that presidents are more often to be depicted when there are foreign engagements? do you see, you know, i'm thinking of 911 or more what are commonly seen as popular foreign policy engagements. do you see presidents depicted in laudatory fashions where more controversial engagements are less so? i mean, do you are there any correlation do you want to point out. one of the things that we saw, especially around 11, was a great sensitivity in the comic book industry because at time, marvel and dc were the two main publishers were based in new york. so they were very careful around

that time. what they did and did not see around 11. so i'm trying to remember i don't really remember many depictions of president bush during that time, any of the major comic books. one of the things that we did and we still do see you can look at the eras, what's going on in history and see a reflection in comic books. back in the eighties with president reagan and the berlin wall coming coming down, you saw the superhero team just this league, which really started out as the justice league of america they were american based heroes become justice league international and start welcoming in heroes from around from from around the world where their focus was no just the united states. their focus was protecting the planet earth. when their original focus was

like. truth, justice, apple pie, united states. you see the same thing with marvel. where in eighties the main superhero, spider-man, the avengers were made up of american. and as we all go through the eighties in the nineties you see more international heroes involved, like for example as depicted the movie black widow, who is actually russia. she's not american. and you start seeing more of an international focus to these heroes. now in current comic books, you see a backlash to some of this in the justice league in the early 2000 the united states the country decides to form own superhero team called the ultra marines because the justice league no longer protects. therefore focuses on the entire world. so there's a backlash who's who's protecting america and you'll see the same thing

happens over in in over the entire comic book industry. it's marvel dc. you'll see a more of a homeland look as we get to more modern times that in the past we were worried about the entire planet. now we're worried about the entire planet, but we have to consider ourselves with our borders and our homeland itself as well. i researched that particular topic justice, but you know one of the things that i do find is there's definitely a correlation what's happening, the external world, and then what happens the comic books and so that engage between comic book characters storylines with contemporary news with other contemporary pop culture is definitely there in the forties, fifties and sixties. i'm trying to think a good example and i can't come up with one that's represen or

tentative, but the it's talk comic books are talking to everything else going on and so i'm sure there there would be something there. just keep in mind, be like six months behind whatever's happening in the news. so that's one of thing. comic books, the comic does not address what's on the nightly news because their publishing gap because of their talking about something now it's going to be six months before their readers read it. will they remember it? so there's this big publishing gap. so they go for larger, not issues that could possibly change in the next six months. that's the job of an editorial cartoonist be on the equivalent of the nightly news and current. yes. is the white house evoked when we when editorial cartoonist discuss issues? no. the white house is evoked by editorial cartoonist and my new

amount is so to begin with. it's usually the personality of the president. but when there's international issues. absolutely how the president handles them is always addressed we have time for more question here and we'll come right here. i understand double editorial cartoons editorial cartoonist could you talk about how some cartoon strips become, editorials? i'm thinking back in the day of walt kelly's pogo and i followed as a young child, the 1968 election in poco's comic strip. then you had hubert humphrey and and george wallace. all these other little figures that were explained to me what was going on that's somewhat like doonesbury, which is

topical. but i understand that doonesbury appeared on the editorial page because that's more honest. that's what it was very often. but what about the evolution of some cartoon strips into editorials so comic strips were editorialized almost from the beginning in 1895, the first comic strip character, the yellow, commented on the mckinley campaign. so there we think of doonesbury and pogo, kind of the insipid and political comic strip. so that's just not true. what happened over time is that comic strips were generally more geared toward entertain men and and shied away from politics. but you're right, walt pogo, the library of congress has a great

on simon jay malarkey who is joseph mccarthy and attacks mccarthyism we have examples of original by garry trudeau and his team for doonesbury. but we also have little abner and al capp in the 1960s became a very political and we have a series of comic strip drawings about about joan joan baez as joan a phony. we have ronald reagan weeping because he's losing his presidential campaign and so. and of course, little annie often addressed current politics

we think of of comic strip artists as shying away from politics and in general they do it's more about social commentary, but there are comics trip artists who took on politics directly. walt kelly was definitely one of them. our panelists will be here through the break and we can continue conversation. i know that there will be a short break now before an 11:00 panel on the white house and television please join me in thanking our wonderful.