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SEQUENTIAL CULTURE #22 12 Feb 04 |
The DC Canon, Part 5: Superman: Red Son |
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JULIAN DARIUS |
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THE DC CANON Read Part 1: Batman. Read Part 2: Superman. Read Part 3: Kingdom Come. Read Part 4: The Justice
League. You are reading Part 5: Superman: Red Son. Read Part 6: Alan Moore’s Swamp
Thing. Read Part 7: Neil Gaiman’s The
Sandman. Read Part 8: Vertigo, Part 1. Read Part 9: Vertigo, Part 2. Read Part 10: Vertigo, Part
3. |
DC Comics’ super-heroes star in a plethora
of ongoing series, mini-series, specials, original graphic novels of various
sizes, and collections every month.
Characters like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are more iconic
than any other super-heroes around.
Yet for all of their sales, some have not explored the best that these
icons have to offer. This, then, acts as a guide for those new
to DC’s characters, for those who may be missing a classic of one of them,
and for those who simply wish to argue what merits such concern. Lists of such a nature are always a matter
of some debate and always involve some subjectivity. They are, nonetheless, not without their
purposes of stirring thought, guiding future reading, and solidifying the
canon. Take this one as you will. Superman Addendum A previous installment, prepared before Superman: Red Son was completely published,
focused on the classics of the Superman character. This installment may be considered an addendum, adding Superman: Red Son in no less than second
place. Superman for All Seasons
thus moves down to third and the “Death of Superman” storyline moves down to
fourth. And so, without further ado,
consider this evaluation of Superman:
Red Son. |
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Red Son is the
controversial Elseworlds story of Superman landing in the Soviet Union rather
than Kansas, complete with a hammer and sickle instead of his usual “S” chest
logo. |
Ranked second is Superman: Red Son, which appeared in 2003 as a
three-issue prestige format mini-series.
Written by Mark Millar beginning in 1995, the controversial Elseworlds
story of Superman landing in the Soviet Union rather than Kansas, complete
with a hammer and sickle instead of his usual “S” chest logo, was held up due
to artistic problems -- ironically, while Mark Millar found difficulty
getting writing assignments. Dave
Johnson, known for his stylish cover art, began penciling the story but could
not complete it and was replaced as penciller by Kilian Plunkett. Andrew Robinson and Walden Wong inked the
two pencillers. By the time of its
sold-out publication, Mark Millar had become a celebrated writer (following
his work on The Authority, which led to extensive work for
Marvel). A trade paperback quickly
appeared soonafter. The
tale is characterized by its rapid pace and its density of ideas. Stalin’s revelation of the Soviet Superman
escalates Cold War tensions and leads super-genius Lex Luthor, married to
reporter Lois Lane, to create Superman’s adversaries. Although celebrated by the Soviets in
ceremonies and propaganda (featured on the back covers of the issues), and
although loyal to the party’s ideals as taught to him by his adoptive parents
on a Communist commune, Superman prizes human life -- including American life
-- as part of those ideals. But this
is no conventional morality tale of a unproblematic noble Superman. When a conspiracy leads to Stalin’s death,
most expect Superman to succeed him and to breed with Wonder Woman. He resists both, however, seeing his
powers as contrary to Communist equality -- until moved by a married Lana
Lang waiting at a bread line. He
takes the position to make the world a better place, and thus history begins
to deform in the great revisionist tradition. Time passes quickly, and only a few nations have resisted
placing themselves under Superman’s benign dictatorship; the United States
breaks apart and faces a disastrous economy.
Superman refuses to invade, wishing not to use force but wondrous
technological prosperity. |
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One has the sense of a great deal occurring in the story’s
chronological gaps, and the hints of these untold events reveal startling
brilliance as events that would otherwise take whole issues are reduced to a
few pages or references. |
One
has the sense of a great deal occurring in the story’s chronological gaps,
and the hints of these untold events reveal startling brilliance as events
that would otherwise take whole issues are reduced to a few pages or
references. For example, it becomes
clear that Nixon won the 1960 U.S. Presidential election -- getting
assassinated in J.F.K.’s place and thus becoming the embodiment of America’s
lost dreams of itself (actually a quite historically responsible
suggestion). J.F.K., apparently
married to Norma Jean (Marilyn Monroe’s given first and middle names), is
briefly seen as President during Nixon’s tenure in our own reality. Many examples, however, come from DC’s
history. Defeating the space villain
Brainiac, this Superman finds himself unable to return Stalingrad to normal
size just as the Silver Age Superman was unable to restore the Kryptonian
city of Kandor. In
the Soviet Union, Batman -- whose parents were killed during one of Stalin’s
purges -- resists in the name of freedom the regime that, while tremendously
positive, also uses a form of lobotomy to turn dissidents into calm and
compliant believers in party. As part
of a conspiracy to take down Superman, Batman uses Lex Luthor’s strategy to
capture Wonder Woman and imprison a Superman rendered powerless by devices
replicating his original home’s red sun.
Wonder Woman, whose obvious love for Superman has never been returned,
breaks her magic lasso to escape and free Superman, causing herself severe
damage expressed visually by premature aging. Batman explodes himself rather than become captured, making
himself a martyr for future revolutionaries wearing Batman-derived
outfits. Wonder Woman secludes
herself to Paradise Island, resenting Superman. More
time passes, during which Superman has defeated these Batmen and uses a
reprogrammed Brainiac to determine world policy from his Fortress of
Solitude. Meanwhile, Lex Luthor has
become U.S. President, with Jimmy Olsen as his V.P.; he has both resurrected
the U.S. economy and returned the splinter states to the union. A covert government program has for years
been decoding Green Lantern’s ring -- the alien ship that brought it was that
of the famous supposed E.T. crash Roswell, New Mexico -- and forming a Green
Lantern (Marine) Corps, led by roughneck Hal Jordan and other historical
Green Lanterns of the normal DC Universe.
Everything leads to Lex Luthor’s final attack upon Superman, whose
hand is forced and must, manipulated by Brainiac, invade the United States
after all. Defeating the Green
Lantern Corps and his various Luthor-produced villains, Superman is stopped
by words -- the precise single sentence formulated by the brilliant Luthor to
emotionally cut Superman to the core and make him question his entire
life. Determined not to intervene in
human affairs, Superman drags the self-destructing Brainiac into space and
apparently dies in the explosion, leaving Luthor to inherit the world. Centuries
pass in the final pages. Just as good
and evil have been blurred throughout the story, Luthor recognizes the wisdom
in Superman’s ideas and plans as he goes about reconstituting the world. A utopian society grows, one quietly
monitored by Superman, who we see to have survived. After a brief recounting of Luthor’s increasingly brilliant
descendants, whose last names mutate until they become simply “L,” we see and
read that the sun has become red in the future. In a repetition of the classic Superman origin, the brilliant
Jor-“L” fires his infant son away in a ship to escape the planet’s demise,
which he alone recognizes, and we follow the ship not to another planet but
back in time, landing in the Ukraine in 1938. |
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The most mind-bendingly brilliant implication of the ending is
that Superman’s very apotheosis at the climax of the story stems from lack of
understanding. In a frenetic story that routinely puts between panels
ideas brilliant enough to occupy entire series -- and good series --
Millar saves his final trump card for last. |
The
most mind-bendingly brilliant implication of this making of Superman a human
after all is not the generic point that the future is so easily conflated
with extra-terrestrial cultures, both alien.
Nor is it the narrative fun of ending the story before it begins, nor
adding personal drama to the old tale of Superman’s origins by making it our
planet and our blissful utopian future that is exploding. It is, rather, that Superman’s morality of
non-interference in human events -- his very apotheosis at the climax of the
story -- stems from lack of understanding:
he is, after all, just as human as any of us. In
a frenetic story that routinely puts between panels ideas brilliant
enough to occupy entire series -- and good series -- Millar saves his
best trump card for last. In a lesser
story, the rapidity with which the story unfolds or the overwhelming number
of characters would be a weakness.
Here, this apparent weaknesses become strengths: one can hardly put the book down. In a lesser story, we would hate that the
artists change over the course of the series, though this change is less
obtrusive here than one would expect.
In a lesser story, the undermining of the dichotomy between hero and
villain would be overdone, leveling any distinction in the self-consciously
clever postmodern manner. Here, good
and evil may still be seen, but no one has a monopoly -- and, indeed, great
good and troubling evil may exist in the same person. No one thinks themselves the villain,
whether Luthor or Superman or Batman. Much
like life. |
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Red Son, then, is a
romp, undeniably brilliant fun, and seemingly packed as densely as the sun
itself. |
Red Son,
then, is a romp. And, somehow, it is
simultaneously serious stuff indeed.
It is not a carefully-crafted masterpiece with each panel in place: the sheer artistic control of Alan
Moore’s “For the Man Who Has Everything,” with its balanced and juxtaposed
panels, is not here. What Red Son
has, however, is a hell of a lot of undeniably brilliant fun, seemingly
packed as densely as the sun itself. To Be Continued Subsequent
chapters of The DC Canon will focus on Wonder Woman, Green Lantern,
Flash, and other DC characters. |
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