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 cspan and through our own digital coverage. Its 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 theyre 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 youre 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 RubensteinNational Center for white house history. And were 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 shes 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 president ial 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 dont 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 associations 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 cant be with you in person, i know that youre 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 president s need to remain in touch with whats 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 whove held that office. Finally, id 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 associations 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 exofficio 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. Todays 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 countrys institutions. Todays panel and if youve seen the program, its 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. Todays lunch that you walk by and saw a glimpse of actually going to be beautiful in the setting today. And its going to give a little hat tip to a pop culture moment thats happening this weekend. Weve all seen the its hard to miss coronation of the king that will take place tomorrow and certainly theres a great amount of history and synergy between the monarchs of the United Kingdom and the royal family and the president s of the United States and the white house. So theres 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. Im 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, whos 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 thats 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 youre 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 its better than the one before and the one thats coming out in june is going to be on the white house in new york. And it is fantastic. You dont want to miss that one at the conclusion, todays 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 todays program is complete. Ill 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 cspan. And if someone in your life doesnt 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 theres 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, ill turn it over to you. Good morning, everyone. Its really to be here. Thank you for that introduction. And stuart mentioned im 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. Its 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 librarys 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. Todays 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 todays event, and i encourage everyone to come visit the library and register for a reader card if you dont already have one and spend some time exploring the resources of the Worlds Largest library to begin todays program, id like to introduce dr. Kevin butterfield wald, who is the director of the clearview center, and hes 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. Were going to be exploring the white house in both comics and cartoon scenes from George Washingtons 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 its both entertaining and enlightening to do. So i dont 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. Im 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. Hes also a distinguished journalist and journalism professor. So let me hand things over. I believe actually have the clicker so theres 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 white house . Thats what were going to explore today. But lets go back to a moment in time as were celebrating the coronation of charles, author. Tomorrow, im 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 thats near and dear to my heart because im processing it now and its 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 perhaps dead ancestors or somebody elses deadncestors. But daguerreotypes also featured and this is white house in 1846. And while the northern facade was depicted less regularly in prints, perhaps because it was a less grand, heres a image from a calendar in 1822. So im laying the groundwork. This is what the building looks like by the 1840s. Everybody comes, know what the building looks like and. It doesnt need to be labeled. So when William Henry harrison, who perhaps had the longest 19th Century Election Campaign and the shortest presidency ran, he didnt to label the white house its there as part of his destination and thats what happens in lithograph editorial cartoons. At the beginning, the white house is a destination poll. Pork running for president c its a foot race. But again, the white house is a destination destination, uh, courier. And it is when. You think ofourier and you think of bucol landscapes. They did a lot of editorial cartoons. They had political opinion and their opinion was that horatios see more governor in new york was the man for president , not ulysses grant, who was they dected dragging the chicago platform across an abyss. All know how that turned out because we dont remember who Horatio Seymour is. Dung the american civil war, the white house becomes part of the emblematic patriotism of esving the union. And so it appears on a lot of civil war envelopes. Civil r envelopes have a huge collection of them. There, really pictorial. D ey a derving of research. If anybody wants to 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 thats 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. Nobodys going to take wealth out of a main entrance. So its the side of, the building that gets depicted. And rt magazine, it was a weekly publication and from about the 1850s to 1917 side sp of presidency, its the side. Want to know. Cleveland is thinking you go to the side. Well, why why doesnt the side appear on editorial cartoons anymore . And i think that is because we dont associate spoils with the presidency anymore. In my transition from four sides im just bringing yothis. Teddy roosevelt, hes like a train wreck running at his 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, were getting into the south facade. It is my argument. And its now 100 of the time it my argument that when the south facade is its the personality the president thats the issue now youre going but thats not the white house. No, its not the white house. Its a summer house. Its 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 hes according to conservative cartoonist John Mccutchen of chicago hes not doing it too well. However, when we g to the larger than life presidency of franelano roosevelt about New York Times imagines a white house thats overtake waon 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 hes remodeled it. Her block the washgton post cartoonist us that hes remodeled it but he cant quite fulfill his promise as president because nobody will run with in his first campaign. Lyndon Baines Johnson larger than life. Everhis coming up. Ses is as it gets to pass legislation and settle issues its its almost like a honeymoon between him and herb block and 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 theyre not available. And we have pretty much every cartoon he drew after the day after. The Johnson Administration cell facade. The tapes are discovered at 19. The existence of ths are discovered in 19d edwards saw whos our editor of the new yorkimes depicts smashing into the white house little prema ticks another ymmy carter am gotc you know he kind we ill think of him as a peanut farmer not the executive he was. But this is certainly an image and this by mike peters from the dayton daily. South facade. The savgs loan mess with Herbert Walker bush who just wants it to go away. And now im going to switch to the north facade. We talk about the north facade 90 of the time. Were talking about the power of the presidency. And why is that . Because the south facade is glorious. Everybody knows what it looks like. Its 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 roosevelts administration, everybodys lining up for a patronage this is a wolf that so closely resembles Joseph Mccarthy. You could call it a caricature of him and its the white house its 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 wasnt so sure. He thought the chickens had come home to roost. And then i get to return to the cartoon in that i introducedhe session with and its block and its e north facade because hes challenging the corruption the presidency and the power of the presidency during the nixon administration, when he dr this cartoon. And its not 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 witthe white house tended to depicted callous and cold. And here is aliceartrudeaus character from doonesbury falling asleep in the snow north fade. Clinton during his First Administration he hasnt even ved in yet. Its Inauguration Day and other occupants of ready and willing to greet him a whole host of inauguration and this is all fun. It sucks. The cat socks was a reg character for many years during the Clinton Administration and was fairly in his commentary and the line is now one is obliged to spend thefour years fooling all of the people all of the time. And puck was elephants, little dingbat, says. Oh, i suppose one could always hope for impeachment. Sidney wilkinson is a pulitzer winning cartoonist from dayton. I mean, sorry, from philadelph and heres a cartoon that deals with George Bush Administration and first amendment. And Second Amendment issues all in one cartoon. And my final cartoou is by mark ransom, whos a local cartoonist working the washinlade. And its the obama white lit up after the ober decision. Remember this moment . It really happens. You dont need to label white. Everybody knows its the white house and i know ive 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, id be happy to answer them. You can grab me at lunch or at the afters. Ill 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 theyre 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 its considered a serial. So it goes along with newspapers. Theres 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, youve seen from sarahs presentation what im 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 youre going to hear me shamelessly plug the librarys collections to get you to come and use the collection. Theres 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 librarys. It has about 107,000 comic book issues and about. 8007 to 8000 titles. So were 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 hasnt a bomb shelter in the basement, and several rooms are open to the public. So it invit you to take a look here. You see the cover on the left, youll various other wlknown washington landmarks. And so one of the things at i find really fascinating and thats kind of where i nerd out is a lot of comics paicularly in this period, but over the course of comics history present educational topics, present fact facts you know they are instruct, live and engaging. Theres even a whole series that designed to theres 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 were seeing, oh, heres two of the series that feature biographic sketches. Theyre called true comics Treasure Chest of fun. Fact. They often you did a biography of individuals here you have Dolley Madison the treasure issue features a number of president i wes. The comics also president s. And well get to that in a litt b. But you know, i wanted to show the diversity of the subjects here because it really isn st one thing in all of these. Theres a wide range and it sometimes seemsompeting with itself. The so true comics, 1941 Treasure Chest fun, in fact, 1966. So youre seeing a really broad range date range. This continues even into now where theres biographies of and other you know, comic renditions, real events that i find particularly fascinating. So at the same time that all of this iing published, you also things like action comics, superman and batman. This particular issue from 1958 shows superman in the white house. And so theres 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 its 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 wellestablished 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 didnt 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 becomes the president. So again a like implication of the white house and superman, the hes actually having an identity crisis on the rig panel here. It says, i am a rich i, a rich man, a poor man, a regular man, or the president of the united. And so its actually kind of interesting and i think that theres a lot more herehadid not have time to take a look at you know, i didnt focus on the presidency in comics during this period. Theres biographies of president s. You know, the factual series feature biographies of president s 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 youll see is a depiction of the white house here explicitly and then supean rushes to save democracy or ithis case, the president and you know, the you seen three different ys that superman here has interacted with the white house and the presidency all within a ir short amount of time, which i was very interesting to me. And thats why im 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 theres juxtaposition you cant you might not be able to see it very well, but the figures in the front are called dancers and theres a i dont know what the right word is here. Its ancient, i guess, or unsophisticated imagery. Thats used here in contrast with the white house as a sophisticated, you know, american location. But its 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 its kind of explicitly being critical of. The American Political Institution while simultaneously using it, represent the thing that weve known that we know about the white house and the visual vocabulary that of thats come through over time. So i had to include this one beuse it is hilarious to me and i hope you enjoy it. Vampire in the white house there is one thing i cant touch on in this particulata is the the history of the comics. Comics, publishing, and why you get so specific subject matters at specific times. This particular youll see you n see a little stamp size item next to the z and thatth Comics Code Authority seal. And so the Comics Code Authority really chaed the what peop saw in comic books. And one t reasons why a lot of the slides that im showing you are from the fifties is because superheroes kind of fe 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 its 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 theres 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 tities under which the we know and talk about the white house d,he presidency and the administrator. Anyou have white house adnistration and the naming of the president at the same time. And so its allyalng in more broad terms about what the white house means as a 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 were moving to the eighties. Theres a comics kind of turn darker in the eighties. You get a batman the reenvisioning 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 youll see. Hes a panel from, watchmen, the figuris 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 indidual and tres a whole other talk in that one in anof itself. I wanted tinclude y the last man as well, because its actually set in dc. Its a series where theres only e man on earth in, the end, a virus has wiped everybody else out. And his mother haens to be a member of the us house of representatives. And so hes going here to find his mother, which theres something happening there that im not 100 sure about, i want to know more. Some of you may be familiar with archie started in 1941, one the longest runni but so you see the various ways presidency is reped acrossnd the a wide variety of comics. You have historical fact, you veuperhero comics, you have gag comics. And so i wanted to highlight the the dnce is there my colleague jesse is going to get a little bit more into more recent comics, which why i didnt 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. Im i like sarah will be here all day. This is something that im particularly excited about and, you know, wed 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, im a washington, dc history and who, whos my expertise is in slavery inside the white house. Ive written books about this. Most of the most recent book was the invisibles the untold story of africanamerican 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. Ive done presentations on that to dc comics and Marvel Comics going through their own collections and showing how they represent africanamerican in their own art form, and more recently, i ive been writing for both dc and marvel. Ive written two black Panther Books for marvel. Ive written a of comic books for dc, includina superman comic book which what i s really interested in some of that material. So im picking up where we just off. Its interesting many of t 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 weve 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 president s 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 obama in books repeatedly, for example, president obama said he was a fan of spiderman. Iterly on Inauguration Day, they were ready to have peteparker in washington so he could meet president obama. So they actually did a this is this isnt 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 spiderman gets to meet president obama. But you will see depictions of the white house and superheroes in comic books. This comes. A one show called captain america will wield thed, where you have the current captain america. Steve rogers coming insid white house, inside the oval office and having a conion with barack obama about, who should be the next captain stepping down now. Eve the choice actually ends up his partner at that time from World War Two named bucky, who through the magic of comic books survives World War Two becomes a russian assassin, then an ameran hero. And then becomes captain america. Ironically, a about two years later, Marvel Comics decides theyre going to introduce the first africanamerican 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 h barack obama here the white house calling out superman to come saverica. Superman happens to be like on another planet at this time and things are going crazy in washington. Y put president obama i the White House Press room say, but dc goes, even and turns barack obama into an actual superhero. They actually turn barack obama 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 africanamerican 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, im just drawing obama in a superman outfit dc thats a great idea, but this man cant really use Barack Obamas 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 isnt brainiac or lex luther. Theyre actually brainiac is computer that runs the white house while hes acting as superman. So dc literally incorporate, barack obama as part of their universe and this character exists to this day and its still being used by. Dc comics, other comic Book Companies got involved in this as well. You see youngblood, which the brainchildt,ob liefeld, you see a savage dragon, which was one of the, the, the author and creator savage dragon actually was one of cic book c to literally endorse. Barack obama had his comic book creation savage dragon endorse barack obama during actual president ial on and of course, after obama won, somehow savage dragon gets invites hi house, which you see in this issue. Im 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, thats 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 whats going on in the United States. Here are some examples here from blue water where they actually did biographical comic books of rock obama, Michelle Obama and, even bo bo got his ownook. Now, i dont 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 will now see. We seeing the marvel cinemaer starting to adapt. President obama, just to this up, president obama is working ie ite house, inside the oval office and nick fury uninvited. And it just shoe al office. Now, i for those of you who are marvel cinematic u fans lookhipicture of nick fury and say, thats not Samuel L Jackson wolf or for us older comiears, we know that the first depiction of nick fury on film was david hasselhoff. So this isidasselhoff version of nick fury. The o, and nick fury up in the white house to form the newly elected president obama. That a foreign country is americas supervillains as terrorists. And so he hes to inform president obama of exactly whats going on. And of the president is not happy that just shows up uninvited in hi a decides to tell him how to do his job. And he tells himlsick fury that, if you dont at least respect thee,oull least respect the president. You should respect the office. And of course, comic book continuity. Fury has been around since worldar. He reminds him of the list of the president s. Hs aeady, whiche eisenhower truman, kennedy, reaghnso nixon. So hed like, dude, youre 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 u. S. President wouldctually respond to the n. Rst muslim to serve a green 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 see him from some artists being depicted as a superhero we see here the siz super team upprobably meant to be more satiric cool than anythin else because his partners actually Vladimir Putin so this is this isdent obama ent and Vladimir Putin actually have some i alsoeam you nonfiction comic books that are done President Trump using words that President Trump himsel has said with different thats being presented by the hollywood the quotable tas 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, its 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 president s. So you see the political power version of the donald trump, the graphic novel which tells the history of President Trump. You also see a crent version of the that same the same, the one for President Joe Biden and for the first time for the vic 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 doesnt mean that they also did not get into the superhero world. So you had trumps titan wch depicts President Trump as a gun wielng American Patriot superhero and of course you have bidens titans, which showsim wearing, of course, his signature sunglass choices and a more slick o xmen 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, thats 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 stewarts introduction of the white house, both as public space and, as private home, could you say a little bit about that . I dont i dont want to call it attention, but dual identity and what youre seeing in editorial cartoons. Theres no dual identity. Theres no white houses, private space other than heres the new president arriving at the white house. Its 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, its really just the public aspect of the presidency. And thats the purpose of the editorial cartoon right. The purpose of an editorial cartoon is to express an opinion and persuade you to the Artists Point of view. And so theyre not to do, oh, theres a new president happy days. Somebody else is moving into the white house. No theres 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 president s featured you know not fictional president s, but actual the president s not sure when the comics really started making being popular that that you start to see them in there but im just curious when they started appearing im not sure who would think that would be me . Yeah, probably. Well start with you. Yeah. So, yeah. What . I didnt show were so in the librarys collection. Have a comic called jfk and its by the publisher dell. I believe its early sixties. Dont quote me on that one, but its a biography and its very similar to. The biographies that youve 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 theres theres one for lbj reagan actually appears on covers and in what are references to reagan up here and various things i havent a straight up comic biography of him yet it doesnt mean its not out there doesnt mean its 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 its 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 wasnt 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, youll 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 president s 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 president s 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 youre i have a question thats ive 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, wed 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 whats 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 werent 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 isnt 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 couldnt write it down until they had evidence that it was true. And thats 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 president s. Im curious about the correlation between Foreign Policy and what we see in maybe comic books is there a correlation . Is it that president s are more often to be depicted when there are foreign engagements . Do you see, you know, im thinking of 911 or more what are commonly seen as popular Foreign Policy engagements. Do you see president s 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 im trying to remember i dont 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, whats 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, spiderman, 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. Shes 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 theres a backlash whos whos protecting america and youll see the same thing happens over in in over the entire comic book industry. Its marvel dc. Youll 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 were 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 theres definitely a correlation whats 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. Im trying to think a good example and i cant come up with one thats represen or tentative, but the its talk comic books are talking to Everything Else going on and so im sure there there would be something there. Just keep in mind, be like six months behind whatevers happening in the news. So thats one of thing. Comic books, the comic does not address whats on the nightly news because their publishing gap because of their talking about something now its going to be six months before their readers read it. Will they remember it . So theres this big publishing gap. So they go for larger, not issues that could possibly change in the next six months. Thats 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. Its usually the personality of the president. But when theres international issues. Absolutely how the president handles them is always addressed we have time for more question here and well come right here. I understand double editorial cartoons editorial cartoonist could you talk about how some cartoon strips become, editorials . Im thinking back in the day of walt kellys pogo and i followed as a young child, the 1968 election in pocos 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 thats somewhat like doonesbury, which is topical. But i understand that doonesbury appeared on the editorial page because thats more honest. Thats 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 thats 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 youre 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 hes losing his president ial 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 its 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. Here