NEW YORK—Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Spider-Man announced in a joint press conference Monday a new cooperation between the city and Marvel Comics. The new initiative uses the medium of comics to better inform New Yorkers on the services of Workforce 1, the city’s free job placement service.
“Spider-Man came to fight the greatest foe in town—unemployment,” quipped the mayor in the press conference, adding that of all of the fictional characters, Spider-Man is the one that is most associated with New York City.
A new Spider-Man comic book was created as an initiative of the Mayor’s Office for Media and Entertainment, Marvel Comics, and the New York Daily News. The entire comic is available to the public at http://nyc.gov/html/media/html/news/marvel.shtml.
In the comic book, the newly unemployed Peter Parker, Spider-Man’s alter ego, has a coincidental meeting with Bloomberg on the No. 6 train. The mayor advises Parker to use Workforce 1’s services as a first step to finding a new job. During his conversation with the mayor, Parker also finds the time to fight a few bad guys and stop their shenanigans.
Workforce 1 has at least one office in every borough. The program offers job placement services, workshops, career counseling, and resource rooms, where people can search job listings online. Workforce 1 managed to successfully place more than 25,000 job seekers last year. Their estimate for 2010 is 30,000 successful placements.
Workforce 1, formed in 2004, operates under the Department of Small Businesses.
