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Because there were not enough well-muscled guys in comic books, Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino is getting his own comic book, to be published by Wizard World and MPS Entertainment. The cover for the book—which will be released at Wizard World Chicago—has just been revealed and it’s by Greg Horn. The interiors have been fashioned by Paul Jenkins, Talent Caldwell, and Paul Mounts.

While some will think this is a new low for the comics medium, Wizard World has a plan for it. We had a lovely breakfast with Wizard president John Macaluso a few weeks back and he explained that, unbeknownst to the nerd-unfriendly world of the Jersey Shore, Sorrentino has always been a comics fan, a love which he clearly sublimated to the kind of mind-bogglingly idiotic shenanigans as seen on The Jersey Shore and beyond.

Now however, he’s able to let his freak flag fly with the rest of the nerds. According to Macaluso, this is actually a way to market comics to that segment of the population that still doesn’t give a shit about them. “Why not expose his 1 million Twitter followers to comics?” Macaluso told us. Indeed, Sitch has already tweeted the details to his 1.3 million followers, who are doubtless scouring Previews now to pre-order.

“The Situation” as a superhero is about to become reality. Just weeks after announcing his latest venture, an “abs-first” foray into the world of comics, pop culture icon and reality television star Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino is unveiling the cover of his Situation comic book produced by Wizard World and MPS Entertainment and painted by superstar artist Greg Horn. The first books are due on shelves in time for Wizard World Chicago Comic Con, August 9-12, at which Sorrentino will make his first appearance in support of the new project.

The first artwork depicts “The Situation” fully charged and ready to go.

“I was confident that an amazing artist like Greg Horn would come up with a great look, but I was still blown away by his painting,” said Sorrentino. “It has me more excited than ever to see what’s coming next.”

The team of artists and writers collaborating on the effort include Eisner Award winning writer Paul Jenkins (Wolverine: Origins, Batman, Hulk, Spider-Man), pencil and inks by Talent Caldwell (Superman, X-Men, G.I. Joe), and coloring by Paul Mounts (Avengers, Ultimate X-Men, Wolverine, and Thor).

“This team we’ve assembled is our commitment to put out a comic book of the highest quality that will have a compelling story and amazing art,” said John Macaluso, Wizard World CEO. “Our creative team is hard at work creating a book that will appeal to a wide new audience, and will also interest long-time comic fans.”

Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. See Lim’s previous OUPblogs here.

We have 99 Days to go before Election Day. How different things look today compared to Obama’s first 100 days. In the last year and a half, the national mood has turned from hope to uncertainty.  The sluggish job market is the economic representation of this psychological state. Business are not expanding or hiring because they do not know what the future holds for them.

The White House, in acknowledging that it expects unemployment to remain at or around 9 percent, has conceded that voters will have to deal with this state of uncertainty even as they will be invited this Fall to make up their minds about whether their members of Congress deserve another term or if it is time for another reset. A certain act given an uncertain future. That’s the crux of the political game this year.

Come November, voters will be asking: do we stay the course and give the incumbents a little more time to bring back the test results, or do we throw the bums out and issue a new test? Republicans are chanting behind one ear saying, “no results means bad results”  and Democrats are chanting in the other, saying, “wait for it, the good times are coming.” With no good news or an objective litmus test in sight, the election outcomes will turn largely on the perception of despair versus hope.

The emerging Republican narrative for Election 2010 is that all this uncertainty in the market was generated by big brother. A massive health-care bill which has made it difficult for business to predict their labor costs for the years to come; a financial deregulation bill has given new powers to government but no indication as to how such powers will be deployed; and now, talk of legislation that would allow the Bush tax cuts to expire in 2010 is only going to spook business out even more. The Republican headline is: despair; and it is time to move on.

Unless they can point to some specific pork they have brought back to their constituents, Democrats will have to deal with this national mood of uncertainty that can easily be turned into despair. The question of whether or not Democrats will lose one or both (because zero is nearly out of the question) houses of Congress will turn on how successfully, once again, they would be able to massage the reality of uncertainty away from the fairly contiguous sentiment of despair into the more unrelated sentiment of hope.

Now that was a lot easier done in 2008. When patience had run dry with Iraq and George Bush, even Independents found it easy to be optimistic about an alternative path. Anything but the status quo was cause for hope in 2008. Not so in 2010, where there is neither clear light at the end of the economic tunnel nor a wreck in sight. It would take a much bigger leap of faith this year for the same people who voted Obama into office to continue to hope that his friends in Congress will deliver on his promises. Indeed, at this point, Republicans and most Independents are probably done with hoping. They’ve heard the boy cry “wolf” too many times.

The only people who will see hope when there is only uncertainty are the Democratic party faithful. If Democrats want to avert an electoral catastrophe, their best bet is to turn out the party faithful who will

This will be a very short post, I'm afraid, and probably unusually illiterate, but please bear with me.

I have had a truly terrible week, with immense family trauma. In the dark times, when I was on my own (which was often) I turned to books as a way of making sense of what was happening, or of finding a way to cope with it. I don't mean making sense of events in seeing that there is a greater purpose, or finding spiritual solace in belief. I mean finding their place in the great jigsaw of human experience, discovering where they click with the experiences of others over the past few millennia. And so while the world seemed to be crumbling around me, I read Pearl and In Memoriam and thought about Schopenhauer and dug words of Ben Jonson out of my memory, and found there something to cling to while the tempest raged.

It is not a comfort, really, to see the sufferings of others. We would be the poorer culturally if Hallam had not died young, but we cannot wish his death on Tennyson (or himself) to enrich our later lives. It is finding our experience articulated with clarity and compassion, having it validated and given form by recognition.

In the Middle Ages, people believed bears were born without form and licked into shape by their mothers (there was a good reason for this belief, don't diss my friends from the 12th century). I feel that in some sense our experiences are the same - the awful experience of the last week was a formless mass, all the more terrifying because it had no shape. But reading, and recalling texts read years ago, helps to give shape to the terror and to what had happened. Literature - or just stories, literary or not - helps us discern the shapes in our experiences, good or bad, and see their shadows in the recorded lives of others. And literature, going beyond stories and not always requiring fiction, gives comfort by showing that it is possible to find words to formulate the horror and through those words to reach out to others and be understood. We can borrow the words of great writers when we cannot find our own (how many of us have used a quotation as our Facebook status in extremis?).

Perhaps I could have found something of value by looking online for support groups, and connected with other living people going through something similar, but it was not where I turned. I did not want the rawness of other people's current experience, but the recollection of emotion in tranquility that proves that even the most terrible of things is susceptible to contemplation, to articulation, to being polished into something which can be held in the hand and recognised. Things being beyond words is the most terrifying state for writers, and when life is unutterably bad, being able to find or borrow words for it means we're not just whirling in the void - there is something, hair-thin though it may be, to try to grasp.

And that is why I am glad I have a room full of books, a head full of books (even those I think I have forgotten) and know where to turn amongst my dead literary friends (as well as my live literary and non-literary friends) when chaos is come again. And it's why I think it is as important to give this to our children as it is to give them food and shelter and love. And it is, after all, why we write.

OK, it wasn't short after all.