Obama and Spider-Man

The National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC has paid an "undisclosed" sum (translation: "embarrassingly large") for a red, yellow and blue stencilled portrait of US President-elect Barack Obama by street artist Shepard Fairey (CLICK). The gallery should have waited until next Wednesday and bought the DC Comics' Spider-Man Special Inaugeration Day Edition with Barack Obama on the cover and a tale of an imposter taking his place on 20 January. Spider-Man untangles the web (title link). Tip for comic-buyers: this will be a collector's item.