Source: Superman: Red Son #1-3 (2003)
Type: Elseworlds
One of the best Elseworlds ever came from Mark Millar, Dave Johnson, Kilian Plunkett (and if Supergods is to be believed, Grant Morrison). Baby Kal-L land in Stalin-controlled Soviet Ukraine, is taken in by the government, and becomes the superhuman symbol of the Worker's Paradise. The twist is that Superman remains a good person, doing good deeds including preventing Sputnik from crashing down on Metropolis (an attack engineered by an American Lex Luthor trying to boost some DNA off him). I say it's a twist because 1) it inverts the usual enmity between the USSR and the USA, and 2) it came from the pen of cynical Mark Millar (lending credence to Morrison's involvement).
Eventually, Kal-L is moved to change the world for the better by Lana Lazarenko after Stalin is poisoned by Pyotr Roslov (guess who). Superman takes control of the Soviet state and starts turning it into a true utopia. Ending poverty, hunger, crime and disease is all very well and good, but it comes at the cost of individual freedoms, and the oppressive regime (which punishes dissidents by turning them into "Superman Robots") creates a Batman. Other superheroes (and villains) are translated into this world as either friends or foes of Superman's USSR. By the next century, Superman heads a peacefully-created Global Soviet Union that covers the entire world except the civil war-torn USA.
President Luthor manages one last attack on the Siberian Fortress of Solitude, but it's a simple note from Lois Lane-Luthor that defeats Superman, appealing to his ethics. I won't spoil how it goes down because I think Super-fans should read the story for themselves. The aftermath is, however, one of its best bits, as Luthor frees the world and becomes its benevolent ruler. A billion years of Luthor's lineage yields a variety of great figures: Lena Luthor , the imagineer; Lori Luth-145, the mathemagician; Jordan Luth-1938, the first necronaut to step foot in the afterlife; Alex-L, Jordan-L, Lana-L, and eventually, Jor-L who, at the end of the planet's days, sent his only son into the past to hopefully prevent it from becoming a cold, complacent place, the very babe that fell in that Ukrainian field in 1938...
Type: Elseworlds
One of the best Elseworlds ever came from Mark Millar, Dave Johnson, Kilian Plunkett (and if Supergods is to be believed, Grant Morrison). Baby Kal-L land in Stalin-controlled Soviet Ukraine, is taken in by the government, and becomes the superhuman symbol of the Worker's Paradise. The twist is that Superman remains a good person, doing good deeds including preventing Sputnik from crashing down on Metropolis (an attack engineered by an American Lex Luthor trying to boost some DNA off him). I say it's a twist because 1) it inverts the usual enmity between the USSR and the USA, and 2) it came from the pen of cynical Mark Millar (lending credence to Morrison's involvement).
Eventually, Kal-L is moved to change the world for the better by Lana Lazarenko after Stalin is poisoned by Pyotr Roslov (guess who). Superman takes control of the Soviet state and starts turning it into a true utopia. Ending poverty, hunger, crime and disease is all very well and good, but it comes at the cost of individual freedoms, and the oppressive regime (which punishes dissidents by turning them into "Superman Robots") creates a Batman. Other superheroes (and villains) are translated into this world as either friends or foes of Superman's USSR. By the next century, Superman heads a peacefully-created Global Soviet Union that covers the entire world except the civil war-torn USA.
President Luthor manages one last attack on the Siberian Fortress of Solitude, but it's a simple note from Lois Lane-Luthor that defeats Superman, appealing to his ethics. I won't spoil how it goes down because I think Super-fans should read the story for themselves. The aftermath is, however, one of its best bits, as Luthor frees the world and becomes its benevolent ruler. A billion years of Luthor's lineage yields a variety of great figures: Lena Luthor , the imagineer; Lori Luth-145, the mathemagician; Jordan Luth-1938, the first necronaut to step foot in the afterlife; Alex-L, Jordan-L, Lana-L, and eventually, Jor-L who, at the end of the planet's days, sent his only son into the past to hopefully prevent it from becoming a cold, complacent place, the very babe that fell in that Ukrainian field in 1938...
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