For the nation’s newspaper editors, one of the most pressing items on the list of Federal Budget coverage considerations is how best to visually illustrate to your readers the fiscal conditions laid down by the Treasurer of the day.

Which brings us to today’s newspaper front pages.

For some inexplicable reason a certain theme has developed among today’s Budget coverage. And it’s all about character. The Daily Telegraph has gone with a Wolverine theme:

Adelaide’s Advertiser likens Swan to Bob the Builder (we don’t understand the connection either). And no, his middle name is not Bob. It’s Maxwell.:

And both the Gold Coast Bulletin and the Cairns Post see Swan as some sort of fiscal Frankenstein (…the image must be in News Ltd’s archives):

But here at Crikey we actually think that Wayne’s opener “this Budget was forged in the fire” lends itself much more obviously to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We’ve tortured the metaphor here: