Under the banner of Lenin: an opinion on the Russian edition of the comic book “Superman: Red Son. Superman: Red Son Character from the red son universe

The ship with baby Kal-El on board landed on Earth twelve hours later than it was supposed to. And the boy, endowed with incredible abilities, landed not in the American outback, but near a Ukrainian collective farm. As soon as the newcomer’s talents began to appear, Comrade Stalin was reported about him. And he raised Superman as his own son - so that Kal-El would become his successor as leader of the USSR and the main trump card in the conflict with the West.

The title of one of the most famous and successful modern comic book writers has given Mark Millar not only the ability to write exciting stories, write sparkling dialogue and create memorable characters, but also the talent to shock readers. Few of his colleagues play with provocative themes as boldly as Millar: just think of Civil War, in which he fought key Marvel heroes to the death, or Old Man Logan, where he showed a post-apocalyptic America at the mercy of supervillains.

But even against this background, the plot basis of “Red Son” looks extremely bold - after all, Millar risked turning the main American superhero into the hope and support of the Soviet Union. And the change of passport definitely benefited the Man of Steel. On the pages of “Red Son” he appears in a completely unusual role for himself.

On the one hand, this is the same Superman that we know - selfless, full of good intentions, ready at any moment to come to the aid of people who are in trouble. But on the other hand, here the Man of Steel finds himself on the side that most American readers - and the comic was written primarily for them - are perceived as the Enemy with a capital E.

Thus, Millar essentially turned Superman into the main antagonist of the entire setting. Yes, the Man of Steel retained almost all of his positive qualities, but his adoptive father also acquired tyrannical habits, which makes the hero a much more complex and multifaceted character than usual.

In addition to the anarchist Batman in a ushanka, other heroes will appear in the comic - Wonder Woman and Green Lantern.

At the same time, those who oppose him are not at all like heroes in the usual sense. Even Millar's Batman turned into a terrorist fanatic. But Lex Luther remained himself - a power-hungry technocrat, ready to do anything to defeat Superman. Watching the confrontation between controversial characters is much more interesting than once again watching how the impeccable Man of Steel protects the planet from all sorts of villains.

An original conflict, non-trivial interpretations of famous images, an exciting and unpredictable plot, as well as excellent drawing, which is replete with references to classic comics - all this allows us to call “Red Son” one of the best works in Millar’s ​​career.

True, like most foreigners who create stories about Russia, Mark did not avoid a bit of “cranberry”. Thus, the Soviet Union, the KGB and Stalin are shown in an openly kitschy style. True, the kitsch is so striking that this is clearly not the author’s hack work, but a completely deliberate step that introduces parodic intonations into the comic.

Even if you're indifferent to Superman, Red Son is worth a look. This is one of the most unusual and fascinating comics about the Man of Steel released in the 21st century.

“Instead of landing in Kansas, Superman's shuttle could have landed on a Soviet collective farm field, and then everything would have been different. Superman would become a correspondent for Pravda, not the Daily Planet, and would fight not for American ideals, but for the victory of socialism on the planet,” perhaps this is exactly how Mark Millar reasoned when the idea for the comic book “Superman. Red Son." And, we must admit, the comic book about the adventures of Superman the communist turned out to be beyond praise!

In interviews, Millar has repeatedly said that the idea of ​​​​an alternative history of Superman appeared to him as a child. He thought about it for several years, collected facts, studied history, and constructed ideas about what a hero of the second world superpower, the USSR, would be like.

Millar came up with an alternative story that, like a mirror, reflected the real story. The collapse of America, the demand for independence from some states, military equipment on the streets of peaceful cities... So, if circumstances had turned out differently, Superman would have landed in Ukraine, would have been raised in accordance with communist ideals and principles, but at the same time his character remained would remain unchanged - the same determination to fight for truth, fearlessness and courage, and boundless love for all humanity. Soviet Superman is just as responsive, he does not miss a single plea for help and saves lives!

Despite the obvious similarities, there are also features that fundamentally distinguish the Soviet and American superhero. So, Superman from the USSR is not the meticulous journalist that people are used to seeing him as, but a military man who observes the strictest secrecy. Instead of the usual symbol on his chest, of course, there is a hammer and sickle. His fight is not for American ideals, but for Stalin, socialism and the international expansion of the Warsaw Pact.

The Red Son Universe is recognized as one of the alternative existing universes and is part of the DC Multiverse. The events unfolding on Earth chronologically cover the period from 1953 to 2001. Mark Millar's idea turned out to be very successful, and the answer to the question of what Superman would have been like if he had grown up in the Soviet Union was more than convincing!

Screenwriter: Mark Millar

Artist: Dave Johnson and Kilian Plunkett

Genre: superhero, fantasy

Publisher: ABC, DC

Series: Graphic novels

The year of publishing: 2015 (original - 2003)

Translation: Anastasia Brodotskaya

Similar comics:

• "What if the Fantastic Four were formed in the Soviet Union?"
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• "Superman: Earth-1. Book 1"

Due to a 12-hour difference, a starship carrying baby Superman, fleeing his dying planet, crashes not in Kansas, America, but on the territory of a collective farm in Soviet Ukraine in 1938. And in the middle of the 20th century, the leadership of the USSR presented to the world a superman of extraterrestrial origin, devoted to communist ideas and a weapon more effective than the American hydrogen bomb; something so powerful that its existence changes the entire balance of power in the world. And although Superman is completely independent, loyal to high ideals and generally seems incapable of evil, the US government instructs its brilliant scientist Lex Luthor to find a way to kill the Soviet superman and eliminate a possible threat to the country's security.

In 1989, DC's Elseworlds imprint began its existence. That same year, he released his first comic, Gotham by Gaslight by Brian Augustine and Mike Mignola, which featured an alternate Gotham in the late 19th century, where Batman faced off against the most notorious killer in history, Jack the Ripper! There were many comics published with the Elseworlds logo on the cover, and they all invariably told about parallel worlds (the very name of the imprint is “Elseworlds”), in which lived the most diverse and unusual versions of famous DC heroes.

And 14 years after the “birth” of the imprint, in 2003 Elseworlds will publish a three-issue mini-series “Superman: Red Son” by screenwriter Mark Millar. In his work, the Scot radically rethought the image of the main US superhero and at the same time one of the most recognizable symbols of this country, presenting the Man of Steel as a loyal defender of the communist values ​​of the USSR, the enemy of the United States in the Cold War. Superman is no longer an American superhero, he is a Soviet comrade!

At the heart of “Red Son,” as well as at the heart of Millar’s ​​other famous works, is an idea that is not just bold, but shocking and even somewhat provocative. For example, in his comic book, the screenwriter showed how cool it is to be a supervillain, pitted Marvel superheroes against each other, and killed almost all the superheroes of this publishing house and caused an apocalypse in one of his universes.

"What if Superman grew up in the Soviet Union?" - this is the question Millar decided to answer in “Red Son”. What if he ended up not on the Kent farm in the good old States, but next to Stalin in the USSR? What would come of this? Here's what! If you mix the mythology of Superman with the novel “1984” by George Orwell, ideas about the horrors of the totalitarian USSR and garnish the resulting cocktail with cranberries, then in general terms you will get “Red Son”, but this is in general terms, and for a comic book the details are important.

"Red Son" quickly but pleasantly deceives its reader, because it does not present the sides of the conflict as one-sidedly as one might expect from it. If the script had been written by a less venerable author, his comic could have turned into propaganda, where good America is opposed to the bad USSR, but Millar, fortunately, is not like that, his story is dominated by halftones and not everything is so simple.

It’s the same with Superman in the comics, he is still driven by the desire to help people with all his superpowers, but, as you know, the path to Hell is paved with good intentions. This Soviet Clark wants to save everyone so much that he strives for more and more control over people’s lives and turns into the living embodiment of Orwell’s Big Brother, who watches everything, sees everything, knows and controls everything. Under the pressure of circumstances, the hero himself does not notice how he is turning into a worthy heir to Stalin in the place of the totalitarian ruler of the increasingly growing USSR under him. At the same time, Superman is subject to Orwellian doublethink: although he does evil, he considers himself a hero. And the most amazing thing is that even though Clark does wrong, he is sincere in his mistakes and because of this, to some extent, he remains that “good old” Superman, for whom you worry and whose fate you regret.

"Red Son" is a comic about the Soviet Union written by a foreigner, so there are plenty of stereotypes and cranberries. The Union here is a hungry (at the beginning), cold and eternally gloomy country, ruled by cruel people with the habits of tyrants, and where dissidents are fought with the help of executions and lobotomies. Soviet Russia in the comics cannot exist without such attributes as vodka, the Gulag and the evil KGB. But again, Millar does not heroize the States in the comic. They here, although not as gloomy as their enemy, are calculating and pragmatic in their desire to kill Superman. To do this, they will pay for operations to eliminate the superman, which in turn will lead to innocent victims. And the country itself, with its careless presidents, will slowly but surely slide into tartarar. And if the Union in the comics becomes a toy in the hands of Clark, then the States ultimately find themselves at the mercy of his enemy Lex Luthor - a self-centered genius with amoral principles, the second main villain of the story, obsessed with the desire to defeat Superman. So in “Red Son” one kind of evil is at war with another, and the comic itself, in fact, is a political satire on the confrontation between communism and capitalism, as well as US foreign policy in the early 2000s.

The fact that Millar turned America's greatest superhero into a Soviet citizen is also quite funny. When Superman says the cherished word “comrade” or mentions the party, or talks about the ideas of communism, it is difficult not to contain a smile. Clark himself evokes the same reaction in the Soviet setting, to which the authors have given a fair amount of kitsch. But this is not a bad thing, no, the comic perfectly balances between serious and funny, allowing you to enjoy its funny unusualness with a smile on your face.

The comic has enough strengths that easily overshadow its shortcomings. "Red Son" is a dynamic story with ethical implications, where something interesting is constantly happening, but at the same time it is difficult to miss the most important thing that the author wants to say through his work. Millar's attention to detail is amazing, and fans of Superman comics will find plenty of nice callbacks to the original in Red Son. The writer gave readers far from the most conventional interpretations of such famous DC characters as Bizarro, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern. But none of them, of course, can surpass the Soviet anarchist Batman in a ushanka, for whose sake alone the comic is worth opening. In other words, Red Son is full of everything that makes a comic a great read.

Millar demonstrates his talent as a great storyteller here, but artists Dave Johnson and Kilian Plunkett deserve just as much credit for bringing the screenwriter's ideas to paper. Their drawing perfectly conveys the spirit of the time that Millar writes about, the scale of the events taking place, the moods of people and superhumans, their feelings, their pain during battles, when you, at least a little, can feel the force of the enemies’ blows to each other... The drawing in “Red Son” is far from the most beautiful of those you could see in comics, but here it conveys the spirit of the story about the Soviet Superman itself and allows you to enjoy it to the fullest.

The Russian edition of the comic book from ABC is excellent. And in addition to the story itself, readers will enjoy a foreword by writer and producer Tom DeSanto, revealing some of the secrets of “Red Son,” character sketches with explanations by Dave Johnson, and very informative notes by Kristina Ogneva.

Bottom line: Superman: Red Son is one of the best and most important Superman comics, presenting one of the most unusual alternative versions of the United States' greatest superhero.

Superman has never been to Kansas. His spaceship did not fall in the United States. And he wasn't raised by Midwestern farmers. He grew up on a collective farm in Ukraine in the family of a worker and a peasant woman, was imbued with the ideology of communism, put on a suit with a hammer and sickle on his chest, and now plays for another team. But inside he remained the same: an alien from Krypton, whose main desire is to bring peace and help people.

How fortunate that the publishing house "Azbuka" has released the Russian paper edition of "Red Son" right now. When I read the digital version more than four years ago, all these allusions to the Cold War seemed to be just a well-captured zeitgeist. Now, in 2015, when relations between Russia and the United States are tense, the theme of hidden confrontation is again relevant. But that’s not what the comic itself is about: it perfectly captures the idea of ​​how similar the two superpowers really are. And, in principle, both scenarios are painted: what the world would be like if the Soviet Union had won, led by the alien Komsomol member, or how history would have unfolded if the States had won, led forward by the genius of Lex Luthor.

If someone else had taken on the creation of this graphic novel, I’m sure it would have turned out to be a complete caricature and ridicule. Millar managed to convey the seriousness of the dystopian Earth-30: Batman here is obsessed with revenge for his murdered parents, Green Lantern blindly follows the orders of the government, and Lois Lane is obediently ringed and bears the surname Luthor. Mark does not indulge in excessive flirtation with the theme - he does not draw bears, vodka, balalaikas and bathhouses. It shows what sometimes seemingly good intentions can bring any world leader to. And Superman, with his desire for world peace, practically sinks to the level of Orwell's Big Brother.

If we talk about the Russian edition of “Red Son”, then it is worth noting a fairly large introduction to the comic book itself. It was written by screenwriter Tom De Santo and is an excellent preparation for reading the novel itself. Afterwards you'll find eight pages of sketches and commentary by artist Dave Johnson, as well as notes with interesting details from the story. I note that a historical note at the very beginning would not hurt: with details about what happened during that historical period: about the Cold War and about relations between the USSR and the USA. I think such a decision would please not only me, but also many other readers. Otherwise, it is a completely standard, high-quality publication with bright printing and pleasant matte paper.

Despite the fact that “Superman: Red Son” quite meticulously tells the reader who Kal-El is, why Luthor doesn’t love him, and what his story is about in principle, Millar did not write the simplest comic. It will be most enjoyable to read for those who are familiar with the original, because you will not find so many interesting details and references in every graphic work. This is the most popularized and colorful version of the famous thesis about the similarity of the Soviet and anti-Soviet models, which is definitely worth reading, especially in the paper version.

We thank the comic book store for the provided copy.