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Though it seems like a natural fit, a Man of Steel never patrolled the skies behind the Iron Curtain. Apparently, the USSR deemed American-style graphic novels thoroughly "anti-Soviet." The film site KinoKultura describes 20th-century Russia as "unwelcoming soil" for comics. With its rich history of cartoons, China may have offered more fertile ground for a "supercomrade." And the International Catalog of Superheroes does show a coterie of Chinese caped and masked heroes. But the characters either base their operations in
Hong Kong or live in a time long before Communism. Besides, Chairman Mao was intent on being the only superhero his people would ever need. But what if the superinfant had crash-landed on a collective farm in the Ukraine rather than the hallowed fields of Kansas? In 2003, Mark Millar created "Superman: Red Son," a series that imagined what would have happened if Clark Kent had grown up in the USSR. In this alternate history, the Man of Steel stands for "Stalin, International
Socialism and the glorious Five-Year Plan." Doesn't have quite the same ring, does it?
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