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18th April 2024

Comic Books

Russians in Comic Books

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As tensions between the West and Russia have dramatically increased in the past year, so too has the characterisation of Russia in Western comic books.

As we discuss below, most of Western comics’ attention this century has been directed towards the menace of the Soviet Union and its state-sponsored spread of communism as an ideology and a system of government antithetical to Western democracy and capitalism. But in the past five years, particularly, there is a new orientation towards perceptions of Russia in comic books.

In addition, we also take a quick look at the contemporary Russian comic book industry, and its penchant for copying American concepts.

1. Vladimir Putin and Post-Soviet Russia

A brief rundown of the geopolitical sequence of events leading to where we are now is worthwhile:

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Our Top Ten Favourite Comic Book Infographics in 2016

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Infographics are a visually engaging, sometimes clever, and usually innovative way of projecting information. There have been some excellent infographics published in respect of comic books (and related media) recently. Here are our top ten, in reverse order. (Where we have been able to credit the creators, we have done so.) The only shame of these is that the concepts almost exclusively relate to the titles of the two big US publishers, DC Comics and Marvel Comics. If readers are aware of any others, especially relating to other publishers, please let us know.

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A dream! A hoax! An imaginary story!

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“A dream! A hoax! An imaginary story!”
The amazing team-up blog of Ross Pearsall.
Review by DG Stewart, 14 January 2015

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Blogger and creative talent Ross Pearsall has been the subject of many online discussions relating to his remarkably creative and fun work in producing fictional comic book covers on the site Super-Team Family: …the Lost Issues! .

World Comic Book Review interviewed him this week.

WCBR: How long have you been doing these covers? What inspired you to do this?

Ross Pearsall: The covers began with me imagining what The Brave and the Bold would have been like if it had continued. I used MS Paint to mash up existing artwork into new imaginary covers. I tried to team Batman up only with DC characters that were published around the time the original B&B series ran, using Jim Aparo artwork whenever possible, to make the covers that I thought might have actually appeared. Upon exhausting that concept, I started to branch out, using heroes from Marvel and elsewhere. This eventually led to me switching titles, using Marvel Two-In-One, with The Thing as the anchor hero hosting rotating guest stars. People seemed to get a kick out of these when I posted them on a message board and when it was suggested I start a blog, I did so in April of 2010. After a while I decided to step things up by switching to Photoshop for creating the covers and switching the core title once again to Super Team Family, which could encompass any type of team up I could come up with. The concept I started with was – “What is Super-Team Family ran forever, with access to any character from anywhere?” That’s broad enough to allow me to feature all the characters and creators that I admire. I switched from MS Paint to Photoshop after over 500 B&B and MTIO covers and 320 or so STF covers. It was a learning curve, but eventually it opened a whole new world of possibilities for me. That said, I am proud of what I was able to accomplish with a relatively simple program like MS Paint while I was using it.

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Urban Architecture in Comic Books

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Modern building materials and advanced design has meant that urban architecture, generally, has become bigger and more ambitious. Structures which seemed enormously grand in the 1940s – 1980s are now dwarfed by contemporary architecture. This has been mirrored in comic books. Some of the buildings which have appeared in the past were either mirrors of … Read more