Every comics blog probably had this 5 minutes ago. My distinction is I called it.
From the Huffington Post‘s 50 fun Obama facts:
He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics
Yeah.
UPDATE: Looking thru Dreams from My Father, I find the comics-related sentence. Young Obama has encountered racism. And:
… from that day forward, a part of me felt trampled on, crushed, and I took refuge in the life that my grandparents led. After school let out, I would walk the five blocks to our apartment; if I had any change in my pockets, I might stop off at a newsstand run by a blind man, who would let me know what new comics had come in. Gramps would be at home to let me in, and as he lay down for his afternoon nap, I would watch cartoons and sitcom reruns.
Yikes, that is one downbeat tableau. And probably the Conans he read were John Buscema and not Barry Smith, and the Spider-Mans were written by Gerry Conway.
UPDATE 2: Fortuitously, Andrew Sullivan steers us to this post by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
First Rahm Emanuel, now this. Is he deliberately trying to make me regret I voted for him?
Maybe he can give a Kennedy Center Award to Todd McFarlane and, I guess, Alison Krauss (whoever she is).
Alison Krauss is probably the most successful bluegrass performer of the last couple of decades. She started a wave of female-sung, prettified bluegrass that has revived the genre as a viable commercial entity.
Not that you really cared, but there you are.