I read this graphic novel with great hope as it was based on a great idea. Imagine if Kal-El, son of Krypton, had landed not in Smallville in the American midwest, but on a collective farm in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic during the Stalin era.

Sadly, the book does not live up to the possibilities and quickly becomes just another superhero story. All the usual characters are there — Lois Lane, Lex Luthor, etc., as are real figures, such as Stalin himself.

But the authors, while steeped in Superman lore (they recreated the shrunken city of Kandor as Stalingrad), seem fairly ignorant about most (or all) things Soviet.

What a pity. This could have been so much better.