In a few days, Spider-Man will save President-Elect Barack Obama from a fiendish Inauguration Day plot by the evil Chameleon. In the world of Marvel Comics, that is.

In The Amazing Spider-Man #583, to be released Wednesday, readers can see Obama throw Spidey a congratulatory fist-bump.

Several past presidents have been featured in comic books before, but this issue makes particular sense: Obama is a comic-book collector and, to his devotees, a kind of superhero.

He told Entertainment Weekly last year: “I was always into the Spider-Man/Batman model. The guys who have too many powers -- like Superman -- that always made me think they weren’t really earning their superhero status. It’s a little too easy. Whereas Spider-Man and Batman, they have some inner turmoil. They get knocked around a little bit.”

The timing for this couldn’t be better for Marvel Entertainment (MVL), of which Marvel Comics is the flagship. 2008 was a great year for Marvel, in which its first self-produced films made it to theatres - the hugely successful Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk.

Marvel Comics was founded in 1939 as Timely Comics, though its modern incarnation began in the early 1960s with the Fantastic Four series. The proprietary richness of their 7-decade history has yielded excellent returns in the last decade, with their characters licensed by Hollywood for huge sums of money: Spider-Man, X-Men, the Incredible Hulk, Daredevil, and the Fantastic Four.

The company leverages that library of more than 5,000 trademarked and popular characters across 3 businesses -- comic books, toys and films -- with little overhead necessary. It's a stunningly profitable business model: Operating margins and return on equity averaged 56% and 37%, respectively, from 2003 to the present.

Marvel’s film production unit, starting with the release of Iron Man, is the main pillar in its expanding entertainment empire. Iron Man brought in $581,931,626 worldwide, and, given Robert Downey Jr.’s performance, earned acclaim as more than your typical comic-book adaptation. Critics called it a leap forward for the superhero movie.

Marvel plans to release two films a year in 2010 and beyond, starting with Iron Man 2 and Thor, another Marvel B-character. Since 2009 will be a quiet year, it may be the right time to pick up shares.

Still, Marvel’s core business is steady and profitable. Comic books remain affordable after all these years and still bring people together. As Cory Bortnicker pointed out on Minyanville in October, a “heartwarming statistic” is that 60% of comic book sales take place at comic-book shops. “Imagine that,” he wrote. “People congregating around a shared passion in the real world.”

As for Obama, he'll surely have to earn his superhero status in the next month. Nothing less than a coming depression -- if we aren’t already in one -- is on the line. Obama's main problem as a superhero, however, is that he's facing too many villains. Washington is full of them: lobbyists, interest groups, Cabinet members, journalists, Republicans, and even those in his own party.

It’s enough for an entire Marvel series, not just 1 issue.