Superman: Red Son is a three-issue prestige format comic book mini-series published by DC Comics that was released under their Elseworlds imprint in April, 2003. Author Mark Millar created the comic with the premise "what if Superman had been raised in the Soviet Union?" It received critical acclaim and was nominated for the 2004 Eisner Award for best limited series.
The story mixes alternate versions of DC super-heroes with alternate-reality versions of real political figures such as Joseph Stalin and John F. Kennedy. The series spans approximately 1953-2001, save for a futuristic epilogue.
In Red Son, Superman's rocket ship lands on a Ukrainian collective farm rather than in Kansas, an implied reason being a small time difference (a handful of hours) from the original timeline, meaning Earth's rotation placed the Ukraine in the ship's path instead of Kansas. Instead of fighting for "...truth, justice, and the American Way", Superman is described in Soviet radio broadcasts "...as the Champion of the common worker who fights a never-ending battle for Stalin, socialism, and the international expansion of the Warsaw Pact." His "secret identity" (i.e. the name his adoptive parents gave him) is a state secret.
First off I'm not the biggest DC Fan, yours trully is a Marvel nerd, and a proud one.
Second I'm a sucker for alternate history stories, and that's just what Superman: Red Son is, and probably is one of the best I’ve seen.
It really tackles the morality inherent to the Superman mythos, placing in a position to abuse its powers, as the leader off Soviet Russia, giving a whole new meaning to whole nanny state spiel. During the whole run we get some alternate versions of classic DC characters, as an anarchist Batman and probably the grittiest incarnation of the Green Lantern. The art is extremly detalailed, I just loved how they fitted the whole superman iconography into the soviet theme.
Wholly recommend that you all check it out.
Originally posted at Land Of Geeks
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