Book: Superman: Red Son
Pen : Mark Millar
Pencil: Dave Johnson, Kilian Plunkett
You really cannot get better “What if…” stories than this one. Taking the definitive American icon and turning him into a Soviet citizen and watching how events unfold? That has to be one of the major achievements in comic book imagination. Thank goodness it was imagined by a very versatile non-American. Instead of having a jingoistic, “us good, them bad” feel, it turns out to be a sensitive, thought-provoking study of how the world would be in an alternate scenario.
Red Son begins in the early 1950s. Lois Lane is working at the Daily Planet, but she is married to a certain Lex Luthor, widely considered to be the smartest mind on Earth. Eisenhower is the president and he wakes America up to startling news, the Soviet Union had a new weapon, a superhuman with powers of strength, flight, heat vision and super-hearing. The Cold War decisively turns one-sided. Agent Olsen of the CIA approaches Luthor with a request to develop either a weapon to counter Superman or a Superman of their own. Meanwhile, in Moscow, all Superman wants to do is to help people, despite pretty much everyone pegging him to be Stalin’s successor.
Luthor spends years trying to thwart the threat of Superman, even taking a sabbatical from his marriage to do so. Stalin’s death, and a chance encounter with his childhood sweetheart, Lana Lazarenko, forces Superman to take charge of his country’s destiny. He brings peace, stability and prosperity. The causality was freedom. Superman was so sure of his ideals and principles and confident in his abilities that he didn’t want anyone thinking otherwise. A rebel who dressed up like a bat often caused chaos here and there, but not enough to change the order of things. Diana, the princess of Themyscira, joins hands with Superman. Soon all of the nations of the world, except two, joined the Warsaw Pact and became Superman’s allies. The two standing out were the United States of America and Chile. (Millar, you rascal!)
While Millar changes the circumstances drastically, one thing is constant: Superman. He still stands for good. He believes that by being the best he can, he is only serving humanity. But by ensuring peace he has taken away the freedom of choice. Superman is too good to be a downright evil dictator, but taken independently, his actions resemble one. That is the central premise and not once does Millar waver away from it.
Luthor is far from a sympathetic figure. His obsession with bringing down Superman continues unabated and while it begins as a matter of national interest, it moves into personal vendetta. At the same time, if we were to independently look at his argument, Luthor comes across as someone who stands for freedom of choice.
Once you get over the audaciousness of the setting you realize how intricately Millar has plotted his story. He asks as many questions of us as he answers. This is probably the most serious work Millar has attempted and it is also readable as hell. It is also a supergeek’s wet dream as familiar DC characters turn up in different avatars and homage is paid to famous covers by incorporating them in these panels, in a drastically different setting, including the famous shot from Action Comics No. 1. The artwork is also a throwback to an earlier era, while the color by Paul Mounts is a rare example of colouring making a comic book stand out, with its constant dull, reddish tint, that somehow feels so right.
Red Son is the best Elseworlds tale I have read. If there are any better, I would definitely buy them. Elseworlds has been rightly come under fire for releasing a lot of rubbish. Being different just for the sake of being different. This is the best advertisement for such a series. We need not be tied down by the rules of continuity, but the essence of what made these superheroes great can be taken to tell a rollicking tale with no boundaries.
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