Marvel Entertainment, owner of Marvel Comics, is teaming up with the UN to produce a comic book for schoolchildren with the purpose of improving the UN’s bad image.

Follow this link to the original source: "Kapow! A hero for our troubled times"

Marvel Comics will be working with the UN Office for Partnerships to produce a new comic book that will include UN characters and agencies working alongside Spider-Man and other superheroes to "settle bloody conflicts and right the world of disease." According to the UN press release: "By making the complex UN system accessible to youth, the partners hope to teach children the value of international cooperation, and sensitise them to the problems faced in other parts of the world."

Exact details have not yet been released, but American schoolchildren will be the first target for the UN’s propaganda blitz with the distribution of one million copies sometime in 2009. Eventually the plan is to translate the comic book into other languages, for further indoctrination of the world’s children. The UN wants children to get used to the idea of visits from UNICEF officials and visions of blue helmeted "peacekeeping" forces.

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This project is something of an admission by the UN that the world body's reputation has sunk to new lows. The fact that they’ve had to resort to clever marketing techniques aimed at children in order to try and rescue their image speaks volumes.

What could these new UN comic books use as plot lines? A superhero needs a villain, of course. Marvel, in this case, need look no further than the UN itself for these. UN officials have been involved in exploitation of women and in sex rings in third world nations. Perhaps Marvel could have Spider-Man apprehend villains of this sort. Or maybe the X-men could bring to justice the criminals who profited from the oil-for-food program/scandal.

These would be more appropriate than using the beloved hero characters to convince children of the UN's suppose d beneficence.