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Underground > Comic Books >

Superman: Red Son

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18:04 / 21.01.03

This Millar/Johnson prestige project has finally been solicited for April 30.

Millar talks it up at his forum.

Here's the cover:

A

23:28 / 21.01.03

I'd just like to say that that logo is fucking cool, and I want it on a t-shirt.

00:54 / 22.01.03

That looks great. How many issues is it going to be?

03:39 / 22.01.03

3 Issues, apparently.

That's a wonderful cover.

Millar seems to hold a great deal of reverence for Superman, so hopefully we'll see some tasteful, thoughtful material out of this.
Millar & Morrisson's work on the Flash was pretty low-key, very bright and enjoyable, I imagine we'll see more of that same respect.

I'm definitely looking forward to it.

yawn - thing's buddy

09:05 / 22.01.03

I'm seriously disappointed with this cover. The Design Possiblities for this title are huge but they've gone and blown it with a coloured pencil raymond briggs number and my god, doesn't superman look utterly daft here?

And it's a bit of a shame that he's EXACTLY the same except with a hammer and sickle on his chest.

At least they won't have to change the colour of his eye-beams (or whatver the fuck you call it)

The Natural Way

09:41 / 22.01.03

I think it's supposed to reference Russian communist (state approved) art, and I think it does a pretty good job.

09:45 / 22.01.03

I think the cover's fantastic, actually, which is why I imported it.

yawn - thing's buddy

10:28 / 22.01.03

Aye runce – I forgot about all those ‘wheat and rolled up shirt sleeves’ type posters – yeah, it is in that vein. But I still think it’s a bit crap. It’s hardly heroic – which those posters were meant to be. And Supes doesnae look particularly iconic (or ironic for that matter) either. I think all the elements for a good cover are there – just badly composed and executed.

I don’t want to rip this book up before I’ve even seen it but for some reason it seems wrong. I can imagine being very excited about this book in 1987. Something about the title is a bit awkward too. For some reason my brain trips over how to pronounce, ‘son’ – in this instance my brain wants me to say it not like ‘sun’ but more like ‘sohhn’.

Weird, eh?

And Duncan - I appreciate your importation skills - I'm glad I've seen the cover. And BTW, over the last few days I've developed a rather 'cranky' attitude to comics and Barbelith and I'm not sure why.

Maybe it's because I've been injecting comic for over 25 years now and most of my veins have hardened up.

The Natural Way

10:52 / 22.01.03

All that means in runceworld is that I need to quit the superheroes for a few weeks. Jiimy Corrigan is not the same thing.

12:14 / 22.01.03

Knowhatchamean about the title, Yawn: my brain throws up 'Red Sonja' and also stumbles into 'red sohhn'.

yawn - thing's buddy

12:25 / 22.01.03

weird innit!?!

The Natural Way

12:29 / 22.01.03

I'm not trying to look cool with the cool kids, but, you know, yr right! I was trying to put my finger on why the title irritated me, and you hit the nail on the head, Yohhn.

12:33 / 22.01.03

I pronounce 'son' and 'sun' the same. Or is it just the look of it?

As for why I like the cover - the composition has a retro feel accompanying the actual dark-red palette which comprises the state-approved art Runce initially mentioned; the hammer 'n' sickle are centrepiece of the picture, Supes merely representative and champion of that ideal (repeated motif on chest, obviously emphasises this.)

And I think he looks grand. But I do have a stiffy for Communist symbolism and superheroes, sooo...

I'm irritated w/ Barbelith too, just now, but I know why. And I have the 'flu (really; the doctor said and everything - c.f. my 'viral infection' comment in Ultimates thread) so I may not be looking at things from an entirely reasonable perspective.

yawn - thing's buddy

12:48 / 22.01.03

Now wait a minute duncan, I'm the unreasonable one round here, okay!?

Meanwhile, back in Phonetica:

I, too, pronounce 'son' and 'sun' the same as well, so I'd say the nail has been hammered further in by your suggestion that it is the appearance of the words 'red' and 'son' together which confuses me so.

And Ronce: thanks for the nail hitting big up!

13:01 / 22.01.03

I didn't have a problem with the title at all, and now every - fucken - time I see it, I'm pronouncing it 'Red Sohn'. In my head of course.

I wish I'd never started this thread. Not really.

Yawn - thought you were 'irate', rather than unreasonable, which I claimed for my puff.

23:10 / 22.01.03

Would Supes still be red and blue though, if he landed in Russia? Wouldn't it have made more sense to have him completely red with a yellow hammer and sickle?

I hope Millar pulls this off because I want to like him, but everything he's done since Swamp Thing has been -in my opinion - shit. I hope it has a level of sophistication and isn't just people smashing stuff and being rude.

00:25 / 23.01.03

Looking at the picture, I don't see any blue, or any yellow: it's sort of a greenish-gray, with accents of red and black.

Trunks and boots the same color as the leggings and jerkin, the color and stylings of an army uniform. That fits, I think...

00:29 / 23.01.03

And don't forget, the reason Superman's uniform is red, yellow, and blue is because those are the colors that Ma Kent had to work with when she made it for him. It's made of the only surviving cloth from Krypton--Kal-El's swaddling blankets, in fact--and is therefore indestructible.

(insert generic wry self-reproaching i-can't-believe -i-know-this-stuff navel-gazing here)

A

03:39 / 23.01.03

That's only pre-crisis, Jack. Post-crisis, it's just normal material, but anything close to his body is protected by his invulnerability aura, or something.

(insert similar post-script here)

04:42 / 23.01.03

Rake, you're in luck. Millar wrote this ages ago, probably around the Swamp Thing era. I saw pages for it at a SCAAM meeting over 5 years ago, and those pages were probably another 2 or 3 years old at least. Unless there's been some tinkering (and considering Millar's disdain for DC these days, that seems doubtful), you may just get what you wish.

22:19 / 23.01.03

I do remember reading something about this aaaaages ago and being excited. Though everything I've by Millar since then I haven't liked, perhaps this can make me feel the magic again.

What's SCAAM?

Jack: You're talking as though Supes crashing to Earth was a real event. The only reason his costume is as it is, is because the writer and artist said it was. It could have been paisley, but it wasn't and I'm certain the red and blue were very conscious choices.

That said, perhaps I'm slightly colour blind and if it is green-gray, then, like you say, it's the colour of Russian army uniforms and everything is right with the world.

yawn - thing's buddy

07:09 / 24.01.03

just like american military uniforms are lightish blue, red and yellow.

The Natural Way

07:31 / 24.01.03

There has been a bit of script tinkering. See Millarworld for details. Or, then again, don't. Ever.

09:48 / 24.01.03

invulnerability aura

Since *when* superman has an "aura"???

18:58 / 24.01.03

Didn't John Byrne give him that during the big re-vamp? Way back in the day.

21:39 / 24.01.03

Sure, which helped explain why his cape could be in tatters, but his underwear not.

A

04:52 / 25.01.03

I think that that aura was introduced because, pre-crisis, Superman solved too many problems by using his incredible, stretching, indestructible cape. I remember an old issue where he saved a town from a huge rainstorm by tying the corners of the cape to radio towers on the hills surrounding the town. I'm not exactly sure how the radio towers could support the weight of what appeared to be several million tons of water (or indeed why there were so many radio towers surrounding a small town), but I'm sure that there is a perfectly logical explanation.

12:32 / 30.01.03

the invulnerability aura was a way to keep the costume intact without using kryptonian cloth. john byrne has also said he wanted to be able to show the cape ripped as a kind of visual shorthand for superman having been put through the ringer

Graeme McMillan

23:22 / 30.01.03

Mark talks this up in this Newsarama interview, as well as going over some old ground once again:

"I can see no logical reason to trust [DC] with the new material I'm working on when they have the power to destroy or cripple books on a whim like this. But, like I said, no hard feelings. It's all in the past. It's annoying, sure, but I genuinely no longer care."

And if he keeps saying that, someone might believe him...

yawn - thing's buddy

14:39 / 04.05.03

oh.

I quite liked issue one after all!

16:11 / 04.05.03

Yeah, it was really cool. I loved the art too. I hope, by the end, Superman doesn't realize his commie ideals are a sham and he defects over to the good ol' US of A. If any one can make the Soviet Union work it's Superman.

Haus of Mystery

14:23 / 06.05.03

one thing that pissed me off about the first issue was the whole 'elseworlds' need to shoehorn every element of superman into the high concept russian thing. Why do we have to have Lois, Luthor et al - it seems contrived and a bit limiting. At least it isn't Ultimate X-Men though which is, quite frankly, wank.

14:34 / 06.05.03

Well, Lex and Lois didn't seem shoehorned so much as a "lets see what's going on in there lives" type of thing. What seemed completely fucking shoehorned is that they had to have a russian carbon copy of Lana and a nod to batman who really has nothing to do with superman anyway. But those things were small.

yawn - thing's buddy

14:44 / 06.05.03

nah, the lana thing was funny. Co-operative farm worker? - I like it.

and batman: well, isn't he in there to help reinforce ideas about one man's freedom fighter being another's terrorist?

17:11 / 06.05.03

The only shoehorning that was irritating was Wonder Woman. But, then she's allus set up as Superman's only possible sexual partner. I just didn't like the writing of her awful much.

Other than that, grand fun.

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