Web of Colbert

UPDATED!: Check out the ultra-cool "Colbert Variant" cover of Amazing Spider-Man #573! You can find it at your local comics specialty shop Oct. 15.

With great power comes great responsibility – and an Emmy for Outstanding Writing.

It also generates a great big fan following, and for Stephen Colbert, that includes the bullpen over at Marvel Comics. And on October 15, with Marvel issues Amazing Spider-Man #573, Colbert – the comic version – will be seen swinging through Manhattan alongside everyone’s favorite webslinger.

Ever since Colbert, host of The Colbert Report, lost his bid for the presidency in January, Colbert’s campaign has been alive and well in Spider-Man’s universe.

Marvel hosts a Web site devoted to the campaign, which features images like the one above. Colbert’s blog at Indecision2008.com, however, delves much deeper into Colbert’s comic campaign – and his accusations of his opponents’ alleged allegiance with the alien Skrulls (including suggestions that vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is, in fact, a Skrull).

“We’ve not yet shown Colbert in a comic in relation to the campaign,” Marvel spokesman Jim McCann says. “All we have shown is the billboard (in the image above).”

That will change in Amazing Spider-Man #573. In one of the wackiest Marvel Team-Ups to date, Colbert will join Spidey for an eight-page adventure.

Colbert isn’t the first talk show host to grace the pages of Marvel comics. In 1984, David Letterman invited the superhero team The Avengers on his NBC show, Late Night in the pages of The Avengers #239.