Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of comic book history that interests me.

Today, as Joe Biden is inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States, I thought it would be fun to spotlight a pair of notable Marvel Comics stories where the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man each rescued the inauguration of an earlier United States President, with the Spider-Man one actually involving Biden a little bit, actually.

THE FANTASIC FOUR ARE AIDED BY AN UNUSUAL ALLY IN SAVING PRESIDENT JIMM CARTER

Marvel Two-In-One was a long-running team-up series that starred the Thing. Tema-Up series were very popular back in the days when comic book sales were done on the newsstand, as readers were interested in "more bang for their buck," so TWO superheroes starring in a comic book would be an appealing premise. Once the direct market became the main way that comic books were sold, whether a story "mattered" in continuity gained prominence and team-up stories rarely "mattered," so team-up books quickly fell out of favor (although comic book companies continue to revisit them, mostly out of a sense of nostalgia).

One of the real tricks of the trade for writing team-up series back in the day was finding a way to get the stories to be more than a single issue. Single issue team-ups worked fine, but since so many Marvel comics typically had multiple issue arcs, the writers of the team-up books also tried to do them, as well, but that, of course, required stories that opened with one character and then went to another one. That was what happened with Marvel Two-In-One #26-27 (by Marv Wolfman, Ron Wilson and Pablo Marcos). In #26, Nick Fury warns the Thing that Mentallo and the Fixer are trying to capture him. The villains end up doing so and force the Thing to take them to Doctor Doom's time travel machine which was held in the Baxter Building. At the end of the issue (after Thing, under the control of Fixer and Mentallo, almost kills Fury), we see that the villains have brought Deathlok the Demolisher from the future.

Deathlok was a cyborg in the distant future of 1990 who was made into a killing machine, but what was left of his humanity took control and tried to force himself to be a hero. Fixer and Mentallo, however, used Fixer's technology to force Deathlok to work for them. Mentallo had once inadvertently read Spider-Man's mind and learned of the existence of Deathlok (from a Spider-Man story where the webcrawler had traveled to the future and met Deathlok) and decided he would be the perfect weapon for them to use. After a quick fight with the Thing and Fury, Deathlok and the dastardly duo escape.

Soon after, the Fantastic Four were in Washington D.C. to attend the inauguration of Jimmy Carter. Fury shows up to warn about a plot against the president by Fixer and Mentallo using Deathlok. Mister Fantastic makes a mysterious phone call and then we pick back up with the inauguration. Suddenly, Deathlok arrives and he actually SHOOTS Jimmy Carter!!

As it turned out, the weapon was not intended to actually KILL the President, but rather inject him with a device developed by the Fixer so that he and Mentallo could control Carter, giving them control of the White House. The Fantastic Four made quick work of the villains and then we went to check on Carter and - SURPRISE! - he was actually the Impossible Man disguised as Carter. It was the Impossible Man who Reed called earlier.

The issue ends with Carter being sworn in as the 39th President.

"WILL THE REAL BARACK OBAMA PLEASE STAND UP?"

32 years later, another Marvel superhero helped out another President on his inauguration day. Barack Obama is one of the few U.S. Presidents who actually has expressed an affinity for comic books when he was younger, particularly Conan the Barbarian. Therefore, once he was elected, Marvel made a quick push to work his inauguration into a story. Marvel pulled it off by taking an issue of Amazing Spider-Man (#583) and adding a five-page bonus story to the issue by Zeb Wells, Todd Nauck and Frank D'Armata.

In the issue, Barack Obama arrives for his inauguration only to discover that he is...already there?! Peter Parker was in town to take photographs of the inauguration and so he quickly turned into Spider-Man. In a clever bit by Wells, he had Spider-Man ask the two Obamas about some obscure trivia about Obama's high school days. Chameleon is totally unprepared for these questions and it becomes obvious to Spider-Man who the REAL Obama is...

At first, Obama told Spider-Man to not get involved, but when it became clear that the impostor WAS a super-villain, he allowed Spidey to step in and take the Chameleon down.

Once the villain was taken into custody, Obama and Spidey have a little moment together, complete with a little fist bump together. As Spidey watches on as Obama is inaugurated, the Wallcrawler notes that he thinks Washington will be in good hands with the new president.

One of the funny bits about the last page is that Wells has Spider-Man make a joke about how then-incoming-Vice President Joe Biden was angry at him because Spidey confused him for the Vulture once on a train (Biden, of course, famously rode the train from his home to Washington D.C.) and at the end, Spidey is worried that Biden sees him. Of course, now, twelve years later, it is Biden himself who was sworn in as the 46h President of the United States.

It is interesting that Marvel did not deal with any other inaugurations of other Presidents. It was a nice piece of verisimilitude to see the heroes of the Marvel Universe interact with the actual Presidents of the United States (Captain America, in particular, has had a few really notable interactions in the last few decades, from getting his shield back from Bill Clinton after Cap was briefly branded a traitor to George W. Bush thanking Cap for helping to save his father's life during World War II, something Cap didn't even know that he did).

If anyone has an idea for an interesting piece of comic book history, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!