Marvel’s First Black President

When President-Elect Barack Obama appeared on a variant cover of The Amazing Spider-Man No. 583 (January 2009), he was not the first Black U.S. President in Marvel history. That fictional honor goes to Isaiah Bradley. If you recognize that name, then you’ve probably read Robert Morales and Kyle Baker’s 2003 series Truth. Bradley is (one of) the first Captain America(s). If you haven’t read Truth, please do. Though I included it in my Superhero Comics textbook, I somehow forgot it while organizing my new Marvel Comics & Civil Rights syllabus — until the day before the first class, when I figured out a way to wedge it into the reading (which required cutting four issues from John Byrne’s 1985 run of Fantastic Four and, even sadder, Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz’s 1986 Daredevil: Love and War — one of my all-time favorites). After rereading Truth, I went in search for more Robert Morales comics and found his eight-issue run of Captain America from 2005. It begins with the five-part…