Sporting red boxing gloves and a sleeveless top emblazoned with a red maple leaf, a smiling Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, appears relaxed as gears up for his latest role: comic book hero.
Trudeau will appear on the variant cover of Marvel’s Civil War II: Choosing Sides #5, slated for release at the end of August. The cover is an alternative to the main cover in circulation.
The prime minister’s foray into Marvel Universe came after Canadian artist and writer Chip Zdarsky was approached by Marvel to write a story featuring Canadian superhero squad Alpha Flight. He immediately knew he wanted Trudeau to be part of the story.
“He seems to be the popular culture association with Canada right now, right behind [Toronto rapper] Drake – and I probably couldn’t get Drake in the comic,” Zdarsky told the Canadian Press. While it wouldn’t endorse the comic, Trudeau’s office said it was fine with the idea.
The storyline centers on Alpha Flight, who now work for Captain Marvel’s worldwide defence program. When faced with a moral quandary, the team decides to seek out Trudeau, their old boss, for advice.
“I liked the idea of him actually engaging them in an ethical debate,” said Zdarsky. “I didn’t want this to just be like a walk-on ... rescued by superheroes and he thanks them and that’s the end of the story.”
The story required Zdarsky to put himself in Trudeau’s shoes, envisioning how the politician would respond to certain situations. “Hopefully, I did a good job. Maybe I’ll get a call from him saying: ‘How could you have me saying that to ... Iron Man?”’ Zdarsky said. “It’s a little tricky just because once you start to put words in the prime minister’s mouth, we acknowledge that this is basically Trudeau fan fiction.”
It was Toronto-based cartoonist Ramón Pérez who decided to put Trudeau in the boxing ring for the cover. “I didn’t want to do a stuffy cover – just like a suit and tie – put his likeness on the cover and call it a day,” he told Canadian Press. “I wanted to kind of evoke a little bit of what’s different about him than other people in power right now. You don’t see [Barack] Obama strutting around in boxing gear, doing push-ups in commercials or whatnot.”
Trudeau is the third politician to be added to the Marvel Universe. The first was his late father Pierre, spotlighted in Uncanny X-Men in 1979. In 2009, Obama made his comic book debut in Secret Invasion #8.
