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Book Review: “Superman: Red Son”
On June 30th, 1908, a small asteroid or comet struck the Earth’s atmosphere and exploded above the Tunguska river in Siberia. It is the largest impact event in recorded history, estimated to have released energy equivalent to 10 to 15 megatons of TNT. Had the impactor been so aligned as to hit the Earth three hours later, it would have exploded above the city of Saint Petersburg, completely destroying it.
In a fictional universe, an alien spaceship crashes in rural Kansas in the United States, carrying an orphan from the stars who — as he matures — discovers he has powers beyond those of inhabitants of Earth, and vows to use these gifts to promote and defend truth, justice, and the American way. Now, like Tunguska, imagine the spaceship arrived just a few hours earlier. Then, the baby Kal-El would have landed in Stalin’s Soviet Union and — presumably — imbibed its values and culture just as Superman did America’s in the standard canon. That is the premise of this delightful alternative universe take on the Superman legend, produced by DC Comics and written and illustrated up the standards one expects from the publisher. The Soviet Superman becomes an extraterrestrial embodiment of the Stakhanovite ideal, and it is only natural that when the beloved Stalin dies, he is succeeded by another Man of Steel.
The Soviet system may have given lip service to the masses, but beneath it was the Russian tradition of authority, and what better authority than a genuine superman? A golden age ensues, with Soviet/Superman communism triumphant around the globe, apart from recalcitrant holdouts Chile and the United States. But all are not happy with this situation, which some see as subjugation to an alien ruler. In the Soviet Union Batman becomes the symbol and leader of an underground resistance. United States president and supergenius Lex Luthor hatches scheme after scheme to bring down his arch-enemy, enlisting other DC superheroes, as well as his own creations in the effort. Finally, Superman is forced to make a profound choice about human destiny and his own role in it. The conclusion to the story is breathtaking.
This is a well-crafted and self-consistent alternative to the fictional universe with which we’re well acquainted. It is not a parody like Tales of the Bizarro World, and in no way played for laughs. The Kindle edition is superbly produced, but you may have to zoom into some of the pages containing the introductory material to be able to read the small type. Sketches of characters under development by the artists are included in an appendix.
Millar, Mark, Dave Johnson, and Kilian Plunkett. Superman: Red Son. New York: DC Comics, [2003] 2014. ISBN 978-1-4012-4711-9.
Thanks for the review, this is a pretty interesting idea. The question seems to be whether being human–or super-human for that matter–has any connection with power. So Superman is supposed to stand for truth, justice, & the American way. You cannot expect Stalin’s heir to like the American way: How does he feel about truth & justice, though? Are those American things, too, or at least non-Soviet things?
Is Superman’s USSR still full of terror & hunger? & all the world? I’m not asking to give away the plot–but these things come up if you think of all virtue as political–that you learn it from wherever you accidentally grow up. In a sense, Superman could do a lot to make Communism work: Stalin cannot abolish the laws that science discovers–but Supermen does, at least in part.
My reply will necessarily include PLOT SPOILERS; don’t read further if you do not wish to see them. (In reviewing fiction, I try to avoid spoilers, especially on platforms like Ricochet where the option of hiding spoilers which the reader can optionally view does not exist.)
In Red Son, Superman grows up in the Ukraine during the hard times of Stalin’s reign, yet, like many, remains a believer in what he is taught. He becomes a Soviet patriot and champion of the masses. There is much intrigue as occurred under Stalin’s rule. This is a very different alternative history, so things which happened in our time line do not happen here. In particular, there is no mention of the Great Patriotic War.
Superman does indeed make central planning more or less work. He, an essentially incorruptible true believer, keeps the system on track and is not captured by the bureaucracy which emerges in any real centrally-planned economy. (Now we get into even greater SPOILERS.)
But ultimately Superman realises that top-down rule is not the way to best achieve the human potential:
Totally similar, yet dissimilar (that’s me, I’m decisive). This review tweaked me on a Brandon Sanderson series I love. Starts with Steelheart. Good “superheroes aren’t good” stuff.
Alternate history for a fictional world. Just good clean fun and the possibilities are endless. I suppose we should be expecting it, with all of the “re-imaginings” of comic movies over the last few years. And the most recent Star Trek movies fall into this category, with the alternate time thread.
Thanks for the explanations: I did not see it go quite that far with the making communism work but it makes sense. This reminds me of serious thinkers like Alexandre Kojeve, who was a convinced Marxist & who decided to do technical work for the EU instead of philosophy half-a-century ago–to make sure communism in a reasonably Hegelian way could come about–a world state, that is, & creature comforts & the related kind of dignity or recognition for everyone.
If you assume prosperity or prosperous safety–Superman!–then the only problem is, what will people even do? Work meaningless jobs to keep busy…
All inequalities would have to be wiped out gradually: & concealed, in the short term. Every human concern would be reduced to a management problem. Scientific administrators would of course enjoy some privileges & prestige; there would be others better off in the service of the world state. &, one imagines, some scientists would be allowed to innovate so long as they remained childishly apolitical, such that even their independence of mind would be reduced to whatever the world state would want it to be.
Even if this were not going to create a clever tyranny, with rather awful consequences, it still shows what is implied in changing Superman’s identity with the place where he grows up: That all there is to human beings is given them politically. They would then have no meaning or worth aside from political conformity. Superman powers could prop up such a system.
I also read recently a piece about modernist art after the Great War; a lot of the thinking behind the horrible architecture that boxes European races in soulless blockhouses was a weird kind of humanism: Millions were supposed to be in need of housing in big cities, in familiy units–so that supposition created a political & moral duty to design the most efficient spaces: To measure distances between bed & closet; between kitchen sink & oven or whatever’s in the kitchenette; between the various bodies in the bathroom–all these things had to be measured to establish tolerable or functional minimum sizes for rooms & apartments, so as to cram as many as possible into any apartment building, all rigorously identical, because any kind of generosity or invention would mean less space for others. The result is inhuman–destructive of any kind of community–& likely to create anger among tenants forever.
So it seems that if you think about a house in terms of what functions it is supposed to serve instead of who lives there, you can solve the problem in the abstract & apply it to everyone. When you see bad consequences, you have to begin to force people to act as if they really were all the same. That means abstracting from the actual human beings to a model.
Capitalism has an alternative: Individual human beings can express their individual preferences–they abstract from who they are, too, but they do it willingly. So unhappiness need not be essentially revolutionary.
Even a superman could not make a centrally planned economy work unless it traded openly with market economies so that it could know what works, what people want and what technology will evolve to improve things. None of this is knowable so cannot be planned, it emerges spontaneously, interacts and changes faster than any piece of the system can know what is going on even slightly more broadly. This superman would have to open up his economy so that it could interact productively with the dynamic rest of the world. Of course a humble, noble, kind, caring person with infinite super powers is not a man, he’s some sort of god so it wouldn’t matter where he lands. He’d be monstrous if some kind of man no matter where he lands. Great premise sounds like it needs some insights from Lord Acton and Hayek, but I’m going to read it, thanks.
Thanks for the review, I stopped halfway through and downloaded.
I don’t know if the authors have read Hayek, but they seem aware of the knowledge problem. Superman reprograms his former arch-enemy Brainiac to process all of the information and centrally plan the economy and society. There is a passage where Superman and Brainiac are looking at a holographic projected globe:
In the 1960s some otherwise serious people were saying that the only reason centrally planned economies failed was lack of sufficient information technology, and that with advances in computing Hayek’s local knowledge problem could be solved, and central planning would out-compete market economies. I thought it particularly clever to see that idea reappear here.
Still, it’s just a comic book.
It’s funny how the comic assumes the conceit that a planned economy can indeed work if leaders are good enough or smart enough–Lex Luthor turns the U.S. from a 4th world dystopia into a superpower just six months after becoming president!–and yet, in the end, rejects central planning because of what it does to the human spirit. Not how I would have played it, but still a fascinating argument.
And the book is a blast to read. Thanks for the review, John.
The practical stuff could be something like this. The USSR did not crumble until late. What if instead of terror, you had the divine powers communism requires?
You’d run into the problem with communism–we care for our own, not for the whole human race. Like the conservative politician said to the liberal activist: Don’t tell me you care about my children! You don’t even know their names!
We know who we are by our names, but names do not really mean anything. They are just ours–it’s our way of refusing to be explained or explained away! Getting a perfect system through divine powers assumes, so it cannot escape the problem of treating people as thought being who they are does not matter. Their individuality, the bodies that separate us, has to be sacrificed! In some circumstances, we see this sacrificial quality in people–but it cannot be generalized without destroying the human spirit.
This is a fun read, I really dig both Andrew Robinson ans Dave Johnson’s work. They both have a really solid storytelling and design sense that make the work appealing, clear, and emotional while not distracting or taking the reader out of the story.
It’s Mark Millar at his best as well. He’s playing with some really interesting ideas and he actually takes time and care with his characters. Mark has a made his own little media empire as of late and his recent work often reads as yet another thin concept to pitch and sell for a movie. But watcha’ gonna do? That’s were the money is.
My only complaint is Supes never socks Stalin in the face.
P.S. Sorry for not a more substantive addition to the conversation. It’s been a few years since I read this. Just pulled it off the self again and will pick at it through the day to see if I have anything relevant to ad on it’s views of central planing and benevolent authoritarianism.
This had been on my to-read list for years; just got it on Kindle.
I disappear forever but I have to post on something comic related. Great review. I read it so long ago I don’t quite remember it so well but it was an interesting take on Superman (a character I really don’t like). I think what fascinated me about it was Millar’s statement that Red Son was pretty much all he had to say about the character of Superman. (I love Millar.) Its interesting that sometimes we learn about characters when we look at alternate universe versions of them.
I think a really interesting look to go along with Millar’s Superman would be Grant Morrison’s Mastermen. Which is part of his Multiversity comic.
It’s been a while since I’ve read it but to give the gist– It’s a somewhat fresh take on the old topic of deconstructionism in comics because it challenges us to consider whether these characters are heroes and what it means to be a superhero if you’re born into a regime we’d consider abhorrent– ie a world where Nazis won WW2. The big questions to consider is how do you deal with the fact that the country you’re working for has done terrible things? How far must you run from the sins of your parents and country men to be considered a hero? How much is heroism and villainy dependent on your frame of view? Morrison handles these themes in one issue subtly and powerfully.
Never thought about it like this before, but given the Red Son premise, could we not say that the Superman comics are a love letter to the US? Probably been a while since they printed or reinforced it, but here’s to “Truth, Justice, and the American Way.”
This book had another interesting idea that I always remember. At one point Superman complains that humans are engaging in too much risky behavior, assuming that Superman will always bail them out. There’s a line along the lines of, “The passengers on the last airplane I rescued didn’t even have seat belts”. Liked that idea.
I read it a long time ago and still, on occasion, pull it off the shelves and give it another look.
The first thing you get out of it is that Superman is the ultimate idealist. He fights for what he believes is right throughout the book. Major characters come along for the ride and we get to see the consequences of his determination/fanaticism right up to the point where he’s shown how wrong he truly is.
The big twist at the end, showing his true origins, hits that final note that really brings the whole thing together.
This book is amazing and I suggest that everybody, at least, take a glance at it. You won’t be able to put it down.
There is something to that–saving the world might teach people they need not rely on themselves.
I guess we have that anyway: There would be fewer extreme sports if people feared death alone in the cold snow or something like that…
But I would expect that people would rather not bother to do things anymore rather than start taking huge risks in the world state.
That’s my main beef with the book. All the magical alien superpowers don’t phase me a bit but the idea that central planning can work if only Superman is in charge is nonsense on stilts.