Heh.

Y’know, this is made even better by the fact that it’s Rhode Island, traditionally home to corruption in state and municipal government that could have kept a super-hero busy for years, and home to Buddy Cianci, who would have been vetoed as a crimelord-mayor villain by any comic book editor for being too unrealistic. (Registration required to follow the link.)

When the former [Rhode Island] attorney general, Sheldon Whitehouse, took office in 1999, he installed a bronze plaque outside 150 S. Main St. declaring: “I will not cease from mental fight. Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand. . . .”

The words are from one of Whitehouse’s favorite poems — written by the noted early 19th-century English poet William Blake.

[New Attorney General Patrick] Lynch, who took office last year, is now preparing to install a new plaque that declares: “With great power comes great responsibility.” The words are from Stan Lee, the 20th-century American comic book pioneer who created Spider-Man.

Lynch said he was inspired by his 6-year-old son, Graham — an avid Spider-Man fan who tugged on his father’s pants and said those words moments before Lynch’s inauguration in January 2003.
[…]
After deciding to go ahead with the Spider-Man plaque, Lynch hit the speakerphone, and as Healey and Lopes looked on, he called Marvel Comics. He said the discussion went something like this:

“Hi, I’m Patrick Lynch. I’m the attorney general of Rhode Island, and I have two questions probably best suited for your legal department.”

“OK, hold a minute.” Over the next 20 minutes, he said, he talked to six people before reaching a top lawyer in the company.

“Attorney General Lynch?”

“Yes.”

“You really are the attorney general of Rhode Island?”

“Yes.”

“Sir, I’m sorry but we have people call all day long saying they’re the mayor of Metropolis or Gotham City.” She said she’d done some checking while he was on hold to confirm his identity.

Lynch explained about his son and the challenges of his office and said he was hoping to get Marvel Comics’ permission to use the quote. “To be candid,” he said, “I’m going to do it anyway.”

“Hold on, I’ll check with Mr. Lee.” When she came back on, she said, “Mr. Lee said that would be great.”

Lynch’s second question was who he should attribute the quote to — Spider-Man? Stan Lee? Uncle Ben?

“Mr. Lee would like ‘Stan Lee.’ “

“Tell him ‘Thank you’ and, absolutely, that’s what we’ll put on the sign.”

Just to do my alma mater proud, and to reinforce the (false!) image that people who read comics never read anything else, we’ve also got this:

Lynch said he’s not going to get rid of Whitehouse’s plaque. Rather, it will go on display in a boardroom that Lynch is dedicating to the history of the attorney general’s office.

When asked to recite lines from Blake’s poem, Lynch just shook his head. “I went to Brown [University],” he said. “I may have read Blake, but I can’t recall if I did.” Then he added, jokingly, “It might have been a morning after a frat party.”

Providence is also home to the building (the Industrial National Bank) that served as the model for The Daily Planet building in the old George Reeves Superman television show, according to a disputed local legend.

Elsewhere in comics: Cerebus. Ah, yes, Cerebus. It’s done now, in case you hadn’t heard yet. See this Julian Sanchez post for a roundup, and for the following terrific Warren Ellis quote:

A testament to utter determination and vision. I mean, it pretty clearly drove the guy insane, but it’s an astonishing achievement.

But of course, everyone who cares to know already knows that the comic is over, and that Dave Sim has been driven insane. I just wanted to point you to jaw-droppingly car-wreck-watching-fascinating funny-and-sad evidence of it. Belle Waring points to this Onion AV Club interview with Sim. I’ll repeat here what I said in Belle’s comment section: The surprisingly odd thing about the interview (as opposed to all of the odd things I’ve come to expect about Sim) was this:

He simultaneously wants to insist on the unparalleled artistic achievement he has just completed, the direct comparability of Cerebus to Metamorphosis or War and Peace or Crime and Punishment, and to keep talking about Cerebus as if it were merely an argument. Great literature usually has moral or ethical lessons to draw from it, and sometimes social and political analysis too. But it’s never merely an argument. It seems to be Sim, not his critics, who can’t separate the evaluation of his creative accomplishment from the agreement or disagreement with his ideas.

After you’ve read the interview, read (via Long Story, Short Pier) this account, by the reporter, of what it was like to arrange the interview in the first place, and this follow-up, which includes an extended bit not run in the actual interview– Sim rewriting the interview (questions as well as answers) with himself in the role of Alex Trebek and the Onion in the role of a Jeopardy contestant.

As Belle says, “Did I mention he was crazy?