TORONTO -- A campaign video that positively compared , who killed half of all life in the universe, received an unfriendly reaction from the character鈥檚 creator.
鈥淎fter my initial feeling of being violated, seeing that pompous dang fool using my creation to stroke his infantile ego, it finally struck me that the leader of my country and the free world actually enjoys comparing himself to a mass murderer,鈥� Jim Starlin said in an on Tuesday.
鈥淗ow sick is that?鈥� wrote Starlin, who created the supervillain character in 1973.
鈥淭hese are sad and strange times we are going through. Fortunately all things, even national nightmares, eventually come to an end,鈥� he said.
The official Trump campaign tweet, posted on Tuesday, features a doctored clip from the 2019 Marvel film 鈥楢vengers: Endgame鈥� that depicts Thanos鈥檚 face being replaced by the president鈥檚.
In the clip, the Trump-Thanos mashup character snaps his fingers, causing various prominent U.S. Democratic politicians to turn into dust.
The video caption reads 鈥淗ouse Democrats can push their sham impeachment all they want. President Trump's re-election is inevitable.鈥�
In 鈥淎vengers: Infinity War,鈥� Thanos destroys half of all life in the universe as a perverse solution to overpopulation and overuse of resources. But as has been a problem for Trump before, the campaign seems to have used the wrong clip.
As , the scene is not the one where Thanos is successful in his goal, but a later one in which he fails.
TRUMP HAS CO-OPTED POP CULTURE BEFORE, SOMETIMES ALSO INCORRECTLY
The U.S. president and his team have previously used pop culture references incorrectly and co-opted intellectual property without the content owner鈥檚 permission, including him using material from HBO鈥檚 Game of Thrones earlier this year.
After the Mueller report was released, that featured the words "No collusion. No obstruction. For the haters and the radical left Democrats, Game Over鈥� in a font similar to the show鈥檚, despite the fact that the report did not conclude that.
HBO responded to Trump鈥檚 post stating, 鈥渢hough we can understand the enthusiasm for Game of Thrones now that the final season has arrived, we still prefer our intellectual property not be used for political purposes."
Trump even managed to irk Canadian rock band Nickelback, with one of his doctored videos. From his personal account, Trump tweeted a video edit of the band鈥檚 2005 music video of 鈥淧hotograph,鈥� which features lead singer Chad Kroeger holding up a picture singing 鈥渓ook at this photograph.鈥�
But the edit featured U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as part of an ongoing effort by Trump to peddle a widely-debunked conspiracy involving the former U.S. vice president. The video was subsequently taken down with the notice: 鈥淭his media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner.鈥�
Marvel and Disney have not publicly commented on Trump鈥檚 latest foray into pop culture parody. It is not clear if they gave the president permission to use their copyrighted material.
