The Amazing Stephen Colbert

Fake newsman takes his fake presidential campaign to the pages of Spider-Man

It's good to be a geek with a popular TV show.

Skrulls-conversant Stephen Colbert is living the life after being immortalized in what's billed as the Comedy Central star's "first full" Marvel Comics appearance: an eight-page, web-swinging adventure placing the Emmy-winner alongside the Webslinger.

The Colbert-Spider-Man teamup, as featured in The Amazing Spider-Man No. 573, is due to go on sale Oct. 15.

In certain editions, Colbert won't only be inside the book, he'll be on the cover.

While Colbert's getting the A-list treatment this time around, he's hardly a stranger to comics.

The not-so secret fanboy has fronted a sci-fi/comedy title, Stephen Colbert's Tek Jansen, for Oni Press. And he's devoted chunks of The Colbert Report's time to discussing Marvel's Civil War storyline, and the resulting death of Captain America. Colbert even temporarily took possession of the star-spangled crimefighter's shield.

Of late, Colbert, his very own bespectacled self, has been a bright star in the Marvel universe.

In January, the comics giant announced that Colbert's scuttled fake presidential bid would be continued in its pages. The Amazing Spider-Man appearance is only the latest and most extensive outgrowth of that campaign, a campaign that mostly seems concerned with accusing Colbert's opponents of being shape-shifting space aliens—i.e., Skrulls. (All the latest Colbert fake campaign doings can be tracked via Comedy Central's "Indecision 2008" blog.)

Colbert is not the first presidential candidate to be championed by Marvel. In 1976, for example, the company threw its lot behind then-hot Howard the Duck. As Colbert himself probably could tell you. If not show you the issues.