Red Son (spoiler alert, you ought to read it before reading this)

I've never been a huge fan of Superman; as a matter of fact the man of steel has been probably my least favorite super hero; however Red Sun has made me like some of the Superman mythology, at least in the alternate universe that Red Son presents. I want to talk about the idea of world conflict this week, in both Red Son and in my later post Jobnik. Red Son presents an alternate world were superman arrives on earth twelve hours later, and thus lands in the Ukraine in 1938 rather than the United States. He then grows up as a communist and eventually takes over soviet Russia.
The primary conflict in the graphic novels is similar to the conflict in every Superman saga, Lex Luther versus Superman. Only in Red Son Superman is the Soviet Union, which in the course of the graphic novel comes to take over every country but the United States and Chile, and Lex Luther eventually comes to represent the United States. The conflict leads to the degradation of the United States till has all but collapsed. This is because massive funding is given to Luther to create his own “superman.” The conflict has a couple of climatic points, in which Superman continually defeats the foes that Luther creates to oppose him. These all include your standard Superman villains, Braniac and Bezzaro included. These small skirmishes are akin to actual battle, and often throughout the graphic novel there is the idea that it is a chess game between Superman and Lex Luther.
These skirmishes come to a head in the final chapter of the graphic novel (that statement almost seems redundant). When Lex Luther ascends to presidency he brings America out of the poverty that it was in and rebuilds it better than before. With the peoples support behind him he finally launches a full attack, with an army of Green Lanterns, the amazons (who Superman has fallen out of favor with after his battle with bat man), and Lex Luther himself. This seems to fail, miserably as it were, but Luther has an ace up his sleeve one sentence that stops Superman and his totalitarian rule.
This graphic novel is proliferated with nuggets of freedom, and the wrongs of totalitarian rule even if it is for the best of the people, but this most important way to understand it is as a conflict, an opposition of ideals that result in the conflict. This is reflected in actual war and the graphic novel Jobnik. It is important that we understand what the conflict does to the people who are not directly involved Jobnik takes a more realistic approach, whereas Red Son gives us the idea that the pawns are unaware of the true motifs of the player. This, to me, seems to be the more accurate picture of war, it is a thing that is about our heads as civilians, and even those directly involved do not fully understand every aspect of what is going on. That leaves everyone in the dark, to a thing so primal in human nature how is so impossible to comprehend and to that end I believe it is that humanity’s own inability to comprehend ourselves and each other that leads to the murky fog of war.