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 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Comrade Superman. With the mantra, “truth, justice and the American way”, Superman is the quintessential US hero, champion of apple-pie values and, dare I say it, American superiority. So there's something refreshingly shocking about Superman: Red Son. The book was published originally in DC Comics’ ElseWorlds line, which features stories that take existing characters and fling them into alternative scenarios (eg, having the baby Kal-El crash to Earth and be adopted by the Waynes, then grow up to be a superpowered Batman). Scottish writer Mark Millar's intriguing scenario here is to have baby Supes arrive, not in the heartlands of America, but in the Ukraine. He grows up on a farming collective before becoming Stalin's deputy and, subsequently, leader of an ever-expanding Soviet empire. Millar and his artist collaborators incorporate many key DC characters into this twisted alternate reality – Wonder Woman (who joins Superman's crusade to unify the world under an efficient, and deeply Orwellian, Communist regime), Batman (a Russian freedom fighter in a woolly hat), Lex Luthor, Lois Lane. The effect is a story that is both oddly familiar but also compellingly subversive and satirical. Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar, David Johnson and Kilian Plunkett is out now, published by Titan Books.
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