Superman: Red Son Volume 1-3
From LeoWiki
| Superman: Red Son Volume 1-3 | Miller/Johnson | Alternate History | |||
| 7 | 8 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 6.8 |
| Secularity | Technophilia | Quality | Xenophilia | Personal Tilt | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Superman's ship lands twelve hours away from the traditional spot and he's raised in Soviet Ukraine to become a defender of people and Socialism. Lex Luthor still hails from US. Stalin passes away and things develop from there.
I don't think the authors really grokked the nature of the unpleasantness of life under Stalin. The terrifying nightmare lied not in the persecution of dissidents. It lied in dissidence being determined by asking if they weighed more than a duck.
A friend or neighbour or anyone else could report you as a traitor and then it was off to Siberian paradise for you. And why wouldn't they? Chances are, you were contemplating turning them in as such yourself. Being taken away in the night by a KGB armoured personnel carrier for no predictable reason is not a joyous prospect to have hanging over your head.
Lots of plain genocidal brutality didn't help matters either. Around 25% of all Latvians got sent to a summer/fall/winter/spring camp for nothing in particular. (Well, some did collab with Hitler's forces, but that was after the Soviets had seized the country and turned it into Club Stalin for a few years; Ukrainians were in the same position, but Hitler was trying to lose the war and had given strict orders demanding opression of Ukrainians for being Slavic)
Living under Stalin was a terrifying ordeal. No matter how naive, Superman would not have supported the regime given his ideals or even Socialist ideals.
The geopolitics in the comic don't ring particulary true or stay particularly consistent. States keep leaving and rejoing the US. "Socialism" advances through the world peacefully, but there is a nasty war in South-East Asia.
If these comics have a message, it's rather muddled. They end with a sort of a Dune-series Golden Path, except that one command economy defeats another. Uhm. I guess the moral is that Stalinism is only good if an obsessive-compulsive American is in control.
