Superman: Red Son

Superman: Red Son is an American three-issue prestige format comic book mini-series published by DC Comics that was released under their Elseworlds imprint in 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. As an adult he becomes a state-sponsored superhero whose civilian identity is kept a state secret, and who is described in Soviet radio broadcasts not as fighting for "truth, justice, and the American way", but as "the champion of the common worker who fights a never-ending battle for Stalin, socialism, and the international expansion of the Warsaw Pact".

Publication history

The ideas that made up the story came together over a long stretch of time. Mark Millar said:

Red Son is based on a thought that flitted through my head when I read Superman #300 as a six-year-old. It was an imaginary story where Superman's rocket landed in neutral waters between the USA and the USSR and both sides were rushing to claim the baby. As a kid growing up in the shadow of the Cold War, the notion of what might have happened if the Soviets had reached him first just seemed fascinating to me.