Superman is the king of superheroes, and that’s all there is to it. Superman was the first superhero, and his growth as a character presaged everything that the superhero would become. One of the coolest things about Superman is the way the character can fit into any kind of story. Superman is an extremely versatile character; he’s a sci-fi character that you can put into genre and make the story work. That’s the biggest strength of Superman; while he hasn’t starred in as many alternate universe stories of Batman, I think it’s safe to say that Superman has some of the best alternate universe stories ever. There’s one alternate universe Superman story that has become very popular over the years — Superman: Red Son. However, I’m here to say something that a lot of you aren’t going to like: Superman: Red Son is actually a terrible Superman story.
There are some excellent Superman stories out there, but Superman: Red Son isn’t one of them. The story, by Mark Millar, Dave Johnson, and Killian Plunkett, has its strong suits, but that doesn’t make it a great story. Superman: Red Son is basically an anti-Superman story in a lot of ways. Superman is supposed to be relatable, but Superman: Red Son takes all of that way. It’s an interesting premise for a story, but it falls apart for a variety of reasons.
Superman: Red Son Breaks Everything That Makes Superman Work
Superman: Red Son isn’t actually a Superman story. No, Superman: Red Son is actually a story all about how capitalism is the greatest thing ever. While Superman is the main character of the story, he’s not the hero of the story; that’s Lex Luthor. Lex Luthor is an amazing character, and there’s nothing wrong with a Superman story starring him. However, this isn’t a heroic Lex by any stretch of the imagination. He’s still the vain monster who loves himself more than anything else, and he doesn’t want to save the world from Superman. He just wants the world to look at him as the greatest. He’s basically the living embodiment of capitalism, warts and all. Superman in Red Son is the story’s villain, and there’s really nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s cool to see Superman in a different way. Red Son Superman isn’t the monster that other evil Supermen are, but there’s always the feeling that this version of Superman is actually kind of dumb. One of the things about Superman is that even without being raised by the Kents, he still has a core of goodness to him. There’s none of that in Red Son Superman. He was raised to be a monster, and he barely questions it; in fact, he embraces it as the story goes on. That’s not Superman at all and even though it fits into Red Son’s central conceit — communism bad, capitalism good — it completely forgets what Superman is. Sure, at the end of the book, Superman changes his ways, but it’s only when he renounces the evils of communism that things get better.
Another problem with Red Son is the other characters, because they’re all completely unlike what they should be. Why would the Amazons jump into bed with Superman’s Soviet Union? It was the antithesis of everything the Amazons represented. Hal Jordan literally built a concentration camp for the people who captured him in war, and that’s why he was able to use the Green Lantern ring. The Soviet Batman was sort of like the mainline Batman, but that’s really about it. The only character who actually was in character was, as mentioned above, Lex Luthor and that’s only because he was the living embodiment of capitalism in the story. Red Son is definitely a political story, but it does a terrible job of actually outlining the problems with communism and capitalism. There have always been rumors about Mark Millar’s work back in the ’90s and the ’00s, the main one being that all of Millar’s books were ideas that were given to him by Grant Morrison. Red Son is one of the stories that everyone believes is a Morrison idea, and could you imagine how different this story would have been if Morrison wrote it? Millar took a story that could have been interesting and just made it into a story about how communism corrupts everything, even the one person was always supposed to be incorruptible.
Superman: Red Son Should Have Been So Much More
I used to like Superman: Red Son a lot, but that has changed over the years. It’s something that has happened with a lot of Millar stories from the ’00s. Millar’s work always had an air of faux-profundity; his stories seemed much deeper than what they were. However, the more we’ve learned about Millar the person — for example, his recent embracing of the far-right ComicsGate movement — the more that faux-profundity is revealed for what it is: shock value. Superman: Red Son has a lot of shock value, but the story is about as deep as a puddle.
I can’t tell you to dislike Superman: Red Son, but I want you to read it again with the idea that the story’s main message is capitalism good, communism bad. That’s all the depth of the story. It doesn’t have anything profound to say about capitalism, communism, or Superman. It butchers nearly every character to make its story work, and the only thing interesting thing about it is the way the ending connects to the beginning of the story (let’s be real — that was definitely a Morrison idea).
What do you think of Superman: Red Son? Sound off in the comments below.
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