By Mark Millar

Pencilling by Dave Johnson and Kim Plunkett

Ink by Andrew Robinson and Walden Wong

DC Comics, 2004

158 pages, US$17.95

ISBN: 1-4012-0191-1

Reviewed by Alasdair Czyrnyj

A confession before I start: until very recently, I wasn’t much of a comic book fan. Thanks to early parental screening, I had never been exposed to the universes of DC, Marvel, and countless others. This very collection, in fact, was the first real comic book I ever read, and since that time I’ve gained an appreciation of the superhero genre. I’m not up-to-date with all the minuate of each series and one-off, but I have enough basic knowledge that I can bluff my way through a conversation.

That being said, what drew me to Superman: Red Son was not so much the characters as the concept: the idea of the Soviet Union having a superhero of its own and actually winning the Cold War was too good to pass up. As an aspiring student of Soviet history and culture, this was guaranteed to whet my appetite. Though a number of flaws only came to my attention in later re-readings, it was an interesting work nonetheless.

The Superman: Red Son series, which this book collects in full, is part of DC Comic’s "Elseworld" line of titles. For those unfamiliar with the concept, essentially characters from the DC universe are re-imagined in new times and locations, many with an allohistorical or literary bent. For instance, one title might imagine the creation of Batman in late-19^th century Gotham City, or who Superman would have lived had his capsule landed in Japan during the Tokugawa shogunate. In Red Son, the story starts off with a simple change: in 1938 (or 1923; the book has a rather annoying contradiction on this point) the infant Kal-El’s space capsule lands on Earth a mere twelve hours later than in the standard DC universe. Rather than touching down in the corn fields of Smallville, Kansas, Superman instead comes to rest in the great black earth of the Ukraine, during the reign of Josef Stalin.

However, the supersonic vanguard of the revolution soon finds himself under attack from the United States, specifically from the creations of government-backed Lex Luthor. As tensions between the two superpowers rise and bombs are stockpiled, Luthor takes on the challenge of creating superhero parity by using a sample of Superman’s DNA to create a clone, a warped, unnamed creature nicknamed "Bizarro." In a rather subtle piece of commentary, Bizarro is clad in a duplicate of the official Superman’s costume, though with a giant "US" emblazoned on the shield instead of the traditional "S."

An American expedition to confront Superman with Bizarro shortly after spins completely out of control, resulting in the destruction of the Houses of Parliament in London, followed by a narrowly-averted nuclear attack from an American submarine on the city. Here, Bizarro is the Ugly American made flesh: hideous, confused, violent, and despised by all. Still, even he has a redeeming moment, as he sacrifices himself to save London from obliteration.

Superman’s greatest trial, however, comes with the death of Stalin. With the Americans on the warpath and the Soviet people uncertain of the future, Superman receives calls to take the reins of power and run the USSR himself. While he initially refuses, his resistance is worn down, and after a chance encounter with an old girlfriend from the kolkhoz, Superman offers to step up and lead the country. While the populace is enthusiastic over the prospect, there is one countervailing argument. Ironically, that comes from NKVD head Pyotr Roslov, a rather typical security-services thug, who makes no bones of the fact he despises Superman. For Roslov, Superman’s appearance has made the very concept of ambition useless as Superman can outperform even the most gifted man. Furthermore, Roslov prophesizes that Superman’s appearance will have dire consequences for humanity as a whole. However, Roslov is no romantic hero, and he quickly learns to toe the line and work with Superman to build the socialist utopia.

The results of that work appear in the second story, "Red Son Ascendent," by far the most interesting part of the trilogy. Here, in the year 1976, Superman’s USSR has become the greatest power on Earth. The cities are bustling, the people are healthy and prosperous, and the economy is booming. In a surprising twist, it is revealed that over the course of the past two decades, the USSR has improved to the point that almost all of the nations of the world, even the heartlands of capitalism and democracy in Europe, have freely joined the Warsaw Pact and stand as honored allies. The only two nations left that remain free and capitalist are the United States and Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, both of which are starving, bankrupt, and crumbling apart day by day.

Indeed, from just looking at this world, it would seem that Khrushchev’s old dictum about the USSR achieving perfect communism by 1980 has been accomplished four years early. However, Superman’s USSR is less like the socialist utopia preached by revolutionaries and more like a spit-and-polish version of Brezhnev’s USSR. Indeed, Superman’s USSR, while arguably the best place in the world, has a number of unpleasant skeletons just beneath the surface. In the Soviet Union, there is a place for everyone to live and work, whether they want it or not. Citizens routinely gripe about the bland mediocrity of their lives, and an adventurous few, guided by the spirit of the terrorist vigilante Batman, happily take up arms against the state. Most, however, are outfitted with special implants to become docile "Superman robots" who will work anywhere without complaint.

Indeed, this fatigue with the Supermanian order has spread to the highest levels of his government. The main plot of this story concerns a complicated plot concocted by Luthor, Roslov, and Batman to assassinate Superman, a plot that, like the many others that came before, results in failure, death, and some quick neurosurgery. However, these attempts have left Superman more isolated than ever, and he soon abandons Moscow to rule his realm from his new Fortress of Solitude in the Siberian wastes.

This is the state of world when we visit it in 2001 in "Red Son Setting." This instalment is somewhat jarring, as a new group of artists have taken the reigns, and a number of minor details in the story have changed from the last two chapters. The story opens with Superman taking a survey of the state of the Union. Thanks to a newly-reprogrammed Brainiac, the USSR is running at peak efficiency, and the final victory of socialism over the United States is all but inevitable. At least, until Luthor captures the presidency in 2000, in a nod to the actual DC storyline. As only Luthor can, he begins mobilizing the United States for an all-out confrontation with the Soviet Union, accomplishing the rare feat of nationalizing the American economy while maintaining a 98% popular approval rating. Tensions between the two powers rise, with Brainiac increasingly pushing Superman towards a direct military confrontation. After Luthor infiltrates the Fortress, Brainiac finally wins his argument, and he and Superman leave to quell the United States together. As could be expected from a work of this type, the United States prevails, though in a rather sneaky fashion. The Soviet Union disappears, and the world becomes the final utopia under the benevolent aegis of Lex Luthor.

One of things that the reader will quickly notice is that this book really is not about the Soviet Union at all. While Stalinist-monumentalism and 1930s-era poster styles are exploited to full effect, the actual theme of the book runs much deeper than mere Kremlinology. Rather, this is Millar’s grapple with the questions of utopia and the sacrifices needed to obtain it. Millar, whose runs in the Ultimate Avengers and Ultimate X-Men lines have garnered considerable acclaim, is no stranger to these types of questions, and he is capable of handling such matters from a number of viewpoints. However, the problem in Red Son lies not so much in the ideas but their expression.

As mentioned above, Red Son runs for only 158 pages, meaning that each section takes up about 52 pages. For crafting a completely new world and exploring the deep issues inside of it, that’s not really a lot of space. There are any number of areas that Red Son could be explored to flesh out the story. The fact that Superman was considered as a candidate for the leadership by Stalin’s cronies requires far more explanation than appears in the book. It would also have been nice to see more of the breakdown of the United States and the various anti-communist alliances in the shadow of the USSR’s ascendancy. Unfortunately, the paucity of Red Son means that such issues must remain undiscussed.

The artwork, while decent on the whole, also suffers from occasional flaws. The style changes completely in the third episode, and seeing Superman suddenly morph from the Silver Age ideal to a craggy old despot is a little jarring. For myself, the most irritating part was rather odd usage of Russian text, with snatches of Cyrillic text suddenly shifting from being mere gibberish (with the "ee" and "ya" characters used incorrectly) in one panel to fairly correct signage in the next.

However, while the execution is flawed, the ideas are not. Indeed, the message of Red Son is a rather cynical one. Both Superman and Luthor come to power with the intention to make the world a better place. However, for them, fixing the world is a stask that is so important it literally cannot be trusted to the people. Superman makes no pretence of democracy in his decision-making, and Luthor’s need to play with others fades out after Superman is defeated. (As another odd point not mentioned in the story, Luthor’s creation of an American world utopia seems to occur without the objections of nationalists, libertarians, religious fanatics, or even business interests. It is a weariness of the soul to imagine the fate of these "nattering nabobs of negativism" in the wake of Luthor’s victory) What makes the affair even more shocking is that the people of both the USSR and the USA do not really seem to miss voting or actually having to participate in public life.

This is indeed an interesting idea, and one that makes Red Son a worthwhile read. After all, what relevance does democracy have, if no one cares who the president is?