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featuring Superman, it is even more interesting given the truth about Superman’s ter-
restrial origins. Human or Kryptonian, being Superman seems to require caring about
one’s neighbors.
Another theme woven through Red Son is that of competing utopian models. Th ese
include the idealized Communist model under which Superman grew up, and in
which he persists in believing; Stalinism and its less brutal expression under Super-
man; American idealism; and the progressive and less totalitarian model provided by
“ Luthorism.” Indeed, Red Son is one of the few Superman stories to depict Lex Luthor’s
victory as a good thing for humanity, as the centuries after Superman’s defeat are ones of
peace, prosperity, social growth, and universal good health and education. While these
also seem to be features of Superman’s 20th-century communist state, the advantage
of Luthor’s utopia is that it is a synthesis of Soviet and American philosophy, in which
Luthor “combined his own ideas with notes from the archives, creating a brand-new
style of government unlike anything we’d ever seen.” Luthor thus creates a government
that is beyond both capitalism and communism, freeing humanity “to become the most
advanced species in the known universe.”
Working along with these utopian issues, Red Son focuses on the notion that a few
central actors can change the course of world events. Despite his occasional claims to be-
lieve in equality, Superman’s eff ect on world historical forces is clear and direct; his pres-
ence shapes, and in some cases distorts, world events. Th e same is true for Lex Luthor,
who reshapes the world despite Superman’s realization that “leaving them [humanity]
alone means they can make their own mistakes again.” Yet Millar hints that the pres-
ence of both characters is the key to humanity’s success, as Superman notes: “Perhaps
[Luthor] existed to keep me in check, or, as someone once hypothesized, perhaps it was
the other way around.” Without the presence of the other, either Luthor or Superman
would have aff ected the world negatively; together, they bring a better future about.
Jacob Lewis
SWAMP THING. One of the most popular and enduring horror comics characters of
the past half century, Swamp Th ing was launched in an eight-page story by Len Wein
in 1971. Les Daniels wrote that “a gigantic mass of moss unexpectedly emerged as one
of DC’s most beloved heroes, and one of the few comic book characters recognized by
people who don’t read comics” (160). Swamp Th ing’s saga has always produced human,
adult, disturbing, horror/fantasy stories with ecological and folkloric themes.
Sensing in 1971 that superhero dominance was ebbing, Wein and Artist Berni
Wrightson were part of a 1970s rebirth of the popular horror comics that dominated
the early 1950s. Th e original story cast Swamp Th ing as Doctor Alex Olsen, and the
characters all wore ruffl ed shirts and longish hair suggesting a faintly Romantic era
with a Mary Shelley-Frankenstein atmosphere. Th e plot involved a Damien Ridge, Ol-
sen’s assistant who loves Olsen’s wife, Linda, and plots to kill her husband. Olsen is
bathed in a bio-restorative formula when Ridge detonates the lab; the doctor is subse-
quently transformed into the Swamp Th ing. Th e paranoid Ridge begins to think Linda
