Russian Super Heros! Kinda...

So last week's post about Russian Futurists got Eli thinking about Russian Super-heros. Basically, the line of thought was that since so much Russian art has been about transforming humans into something more than human, who are capable of freeing themselves of the constraints of the past, they must have some pretty rad super hero types.

Unfortunately, the data gathered to test that hypothesis doesn't look good. Using this as the only source of information, it seems like super-heros, and comics in general for that matter, had a hard time developing in Russia. Reasons include:

Getting the business end of two world wars meant there wasn't enough paper.
The concept of comics and graphic novels was deemed to be anti-Soviet.
Nobody wants to read comics when you could be reading Das Kapital for the 70th time, paid for by the People.

The page (which you really should look at if only for the Pulitzer Prize-winning wallpaper) concludes with "

All the efforts to establish comic culture in Russia are in vain...".

It should be noted that this was written by one of the largest comic distributers in Moscow. Back to wrestling bears in abandoned steel mills for that guy, I guess.

On a brighter note, here's a couple pictures that Eli found while researching this:

I was pretty sure this is just Captain America with different, more Russian, colors. But then I looked at his eyes (see enlargement), and I knew from that look of despair that our man had to be pure Rusky. He dreams of freedom from his mob debts.

And here's a cartoon train that came up on Google Image Search: