I begin this installment of Comics for Manga Lovers with a caveat: The Red Star won’t be every Naruto fan’s idea of a ripping yarn. But if you’re the sort of reader who enjoyed the beautiful illustrations and lengthy history lessons of Satsuma Gishiden and Times of Botchan, or love Tezuka best when he’s conjuring up futuristic dystopias, then The Red Star might be your cup of matcha. And if you’ve seen your share of Eisenstein films or get positively giddy at the prospect of talking Tatlin, well, so much the better.

The Red Star’s creators describe it as “an epic mythology based on the Cold War” that “follows the quest of Marcus Antares as he labors to free his nation from the vile legacy of Imbohl, the sorceror whose insanity turned an entire nation’s Utopian dreams into nightmarish tragedy.” The first major story arc (as related in volumes one through three) focuses on the Skyfurnace RSS Konstantinov. Many of its crew—including Marcus’s wife Maya and his older brother Urik—survived a grim rout at Kar Dathra, a remote outpost in the breakaway republic of Al’ Istaan. Though military officials insist that Marcus perished in the battle, Maya learns that Marcus is, in fact, wandering the afterlife. Worse still, Marcus and his fellow former revolutionaries face an even bleaker fate than the one dished out by the Nistaani warriors: their very souls will be re-purposed as PHE (Post Human Energy, a.k.a. fuel) for the Soviet military-industrial complex. (It’s Soylent Green by way of Chernobyl!) Aided by the Konstantinov’s crew, Maya attempts to liberate her fallen comrades, find her hubby, and reveal the depth of Imbohl’s treachery to the United Republics of the Red Star.

You don’t need to be Henry Kissinger to see what Christian Gossett and crew have done: they’ve retold the story of the early USSR, when Lenin’s vision of a bright socialist future was supplanted by Stalin’s corrupt, self-aggrandizing vision of peace through military might. This being a comic book, however, the creators have mingled sci-fi and fantasy elements with history, borrowing plot points from the pages of the Afghani-Soviet conflict, cooking up some cool-looking airships, and endowing their characters with some old-fashioned magical powers, harnessed to maximum deadliness through Soviet engineering. The aesthetic, too, draws heavily on Socialist Realism for its inspiration. The characters look like refugees from Soviet propaganda posters with their muscular physiques, skyward gazes, and military-issue ushankas, while their tanks and skyfurnaces look like more badass versions of Brezhnev-era machinery.

The Red Star does have its faults. Not all of the plot lines make complete sense, and, at times, the story vanishes in dense thickets of expository prose. Perhaps it’s inevitable that a comic book about a Bizarro World USSR would read like a proletarian novel from the 1920s (Chapaev and Cement come to mind*) with numerous digressions, memos, and speeches interrupting the battle scenes, but I sometimes wish that the creators spent a little less time embroidering the details of their richly imagined dystopia and a little more time blowing stuff up.

The stunning artwork and strong female characters, however, more than compensate for the occasional speechifying and techno-babble. Archangel Studios favors a digital coloring process that helps them achieve a cinematic level of verisimilitude. For manga lovers who often find the colors in American comics flat or garish, The Red Star will come as a revelation, and may make you wish that your favorite Japanese import boasted a similar palette. The strong, take-no-prisoners cast of women is also a boon for readers weary of boob socks, panty shots, and katana-wielding schoolgirls. Maya, in particular, epitomizes the kind of character I’d like to see more often: a strong, resourceful woman who is neither at he mercy of her emotions nor in denial about them. Though she’s fierce—they don’t call her “Comrade Sorceress” for nothing—she’s not a man in drag. She’s a warrior and a wife, motivated both by her fierce patriotism and her grief over losing her husband.

What tickles me most about The Red Star, however, is the depth of the team’s research. If you’ve ever wanted to reassure your friends and family that comic books can be educational, there’s a bibliography at the end of each TPB citing the authors’ inspirations. I never thought I’d see a prominent historian like Robert Tucker get a shout-out in a comic book, though it makes me glad I paid attention in my European History seminar. If you’re feeling extra geeky, I humbly offer my own mini-bibliography below for further reading.

VOLUMES
The Red Star is published by Archangel Studios. Much of its run has been anthologized in three trade paperbacks (see list for details). Under the title The Red Star: Sword of Lies, a new story arc was introduced last year (2006) exploring Imbohl’s personal history. The second issue in the series has just been released (August 2007). And for those who like to take their comic book engagement to the next level, there’s also a Red Star video game for the Sony PlayStation and a contest inviting fans to write the next chapter in the saga.

• The Red Star Volume 1: The Battle of Kar Dathra’s Gate (TPB)
• The Red Star Volume 2: Nokgorka (TPB)
• The Red Star Volume 3: The Prison of Souls (TPB)
• The Red Star: Sword of Lies, Nos. 1 & 2
• The Red Star Annual 1: Run, Makita, Run

SOVIET CULTURE AND HISTORY
Recent books on various aspects of Soviet culture (art, music, literature) and history.

• Bown, Matthew Cullerne. 1991. Art Under Stalin. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers.
• Clark, Katerina, 2000. The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Fitzgerald, Sheila. 2001. The Russian Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Kotkin, Stephen. 1997. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
• Maes, Francis. 2006. A History of Russian Music from Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
• Stites, Richard. 1992. Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society Since 1900. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Tucker, Robert, ed. 1998. Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation. New York: Transaction Publishers.

SOVIET SCI-FI
Do yourself a favor and skip both film adaptations of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris—the Soviet and American versions are equally pokey and pretentious. For real Bolshevik/Soviet sci-fi flava, try these two works.

• Bogdanov, Alexander. 1984. Red Star: The First Communist Utopia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [orig. pub. 1912]
• Zamyatin, Yevgeny. 2006. We. New York: The Modern Library. [orig. pub. 1921]

SOVIET MUSIC
A few suggestions for mood music:

• Echoes of a Red Empire. Soviet Army Ensemble. Jasmine Music B000056V1S.**
• Mosolov, Aleksandr. Zavod [The Iron Foundry]. Riccardo Chailly and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Decca B00000E554.
• Popov, Gavril. Symphony No. 1, Opus 7. Leon Botstein and the London Symphony Orchestra. Telarc B0006A9GKY.
• Prokofiev, Sergei. Ivan the Terrible. Leonard Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony. Mobile Fidelity Koch B0000CABB4.
• Shostakovich, Dmitri. Symphony No. 8. Valery Gergiev and the Kirov Orchestra. Phillips B0000041BC.
• Shostakovich, Dmitri. Symphony No. 11. Mstislav Rostropovich and the London Symphony Orchestra. LSO Live UK B00006C2D8.

* For further reading, visit SovLit.com, which describes its mission as summarizing works of Soviet literature “for those unable or too lazy to read them in the original.” Yes, it’s Cliff Notes for some of the greatest boy-meets-tractor stories ever written! Actually, the site features all sorts of weird and wonderful nuggets about Socialist Realism, from author biographies to Pravda articles to Comrades of the Month.

** The Soviet equivalent of Now That’s What I Call Music! For the morbidly curious, SovMusic.ru offers hundreds of MP3 files and lyric sheets for songs with titles like “A Bolshevik Leaves Home,” “Sons of Revolution,” “To The Barricades,” “Lenin is With Us,” and “Lenin Lived Here.”

COMICS FOR MANGA LOVERS INDEX
Comics for Manga Lovers: May 2007 (Essex County: Tales from the Farm, Korgi)
Comics for Manga Lovers: January 2007 (Mouse Guard, The Killer, Okko, Robotika)
Comics for Manga Lovers: November 2006 (Daughters of the Dragon, Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall)