SuperHeroes were the mainstay of comic strips – and for so long that generations of Bat Girls and Sons Of Robin had to be invented.
With demand exceeding supply, it was only a matter of time before Russians were drafted into the genre.
Red Star – real name Leonid – was the creation of Teen Titans, a comic produced intermittently from the 50s to the 90s.
Leonid had many adventures with the Titans with most of the plots being hatched by his wicked father, Konstantin, who worked in Russia’s evil Science Park. It’s not clear from the comic whether that’s the one in Novosibirsk but . . . . hmmm.
By 1996, Red Star learns that his wicked father is breeding Meta Men – a special brain dead variety of the human species – in an attempt to overthrow President Yeltsin and blame it on the Americans. Sounds like La Russophobe wrote the script, doesn’t it?
All comic book heroes should have a romantic interest of course, and Leonid’s significant other is a girl called Maladi Malanova. Appropriately, Maladi is sent as a KGB agent to America with an infectious and terminal disease which will wipe Americans off the planet. But in the nick of time, Leonid and the Titans intervene.
In his endeavours, spanning many comic bookyears, Red Star is helped by a mysterious agent called Anna. There’s no romantic interest here, probably because Leonid does not realise that Anna – pictured right – is in fact Anastasia, the heiress to the whole of Russia! Comic book heroes can be really thick at times.
Leonid quits the Titans when he discovers the US are funding the Titans as a foreign NGO. (No surprise there.) But after a brush with rogue agents Hammer and Sickle he finally receives asylum in the US.
In the later strips, Red Star morphs into someone looking remarkably like Putin. Very prophetic these comics. Maladi is the blonde in the pink blouse and no, she never does make it to the wedding.
