Superman: Red Son
July 22nd, 2008 by MartinOriginally a three-issue miniseries, this TPB was a bit more dark and foreboding than what I normally think of as a Superman comic.
The premise is simple: let’s assume Superman’s cradle/spaceship landed in Russia rather than the U.S.A., and that he was raised on a Russian farming commune. The concept that he would also embrace and adopt the principals of communism is not terribly difficult to accept. After all, it doesn’t seem like that far a leap from saving humanity to giving everyone basic human needs and treating everyone as equals. But, like communism, the implementation doesn’t quite match up with the theory, and in the end of this book, Superman’s ideals are twisted and corrupted.
Read on for more analysis and discussion, along with some pretty major spoilers. (more…)