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What a fantastic idea. A counter-fantastical take on Superman, where the once Clark Kent comes to Earth in a communal farm in the Ukraine, USSR rather than the Kent farm outside Smallville, USA. Twelve hours difference in Superman's arrival is twelve hours that make all the difference.

Soviet Superman works for Stalin instead of Eisenhower, and the Cold War takes a very different turn. The Warsaw Pact comes to dominate the Earth. Nixon is assassinated, Kennedy becomes a debauched old fool, Lex Luthor marries Lois Lane, James Olson is a CIA liaison, Milton Friedman becomes US President and ensures that only Chile and the USA maintain a free market economy, and Luthor creates Bizarro, a Green Lantern army, and countless supervillains -- all in an attempt to defeat the great Communist Superman.

Red Superman then takes over the USSR after Stalin is assassinated, creating a world wide Utopia in a bloodless revolution. He makes a pact with Braniac (who shrinks Stalingrad for his great museum), allies with Wonder Woman, eradicates prisons with a futuristic lobotomy, and watches as a bastard son of Stalin gives rise to Batmanovic -- a counter-revolutionary obsessed with independent thought and freedom (Russo-Batman and his philosophical obsession are a pair of the graphic novel's weakest points).

Mike Millar's creativity is undeniable, and the pencils by Johnson and Kilian Plunkett are perfect. But none of this is good enough.

The three issue "prestige format mini-series" is far too small to accommodate a story of such strength and vision. It is merely a skeleton of something that could have been great. If each issue in the mini-series had been a year of comics, if DC had commissioned 36 issues rather than three, Red Son would have been one of the greatest comics ever written; instead, it is merely clever.

I wanted to watch Superman as the Czar of the Warsaw Pact. I wanted to see his relationship with Diana/Wonder Woman unfold. I wanted to follow Lex Luthor's alternate growth as a sanctioned hero, and the ultimate move to his 5000 year Reich (a portion of the story that earned only a few pages). I wanted more of Bizarro and Braniac and the Green Lantern Corp and the Soviet Batman. I wanted MORE!

So the lesson I learned from Red Son is this: less is not always more. I will forever appreciate Mark Millar's attempt at something groundbreaking, but the attempt will never mitigate my disappointment with its execution. Clever just isn't good enough. Sorry, Mr. Millar.