Character Contest 36: Superman Villain
Second entry : Joseph Stalin, Communism’s “Man of Steel.” Naturally, he would fight the Golden Age Superman during the Cold War (post-World War II to the fall of the Berlin Wall). I modified his origin(s) from my Contest entries.
Stalin
Close-up
Origins
Alternate Earth-39
What if Kal-El, sole survivor of Krypton, had not crashed in a wheat field outside of Smallville? Instead, the alien orphan destined to become the Man of Steel was found in a field outside of Gori, Georgia, on December 18, 1879. Georgia, in the Tiflis Governate of the Russian Empire, that is.
Iosev Jugashvili discovered his super powers as a young agitator in the Social Democratic Labour Party. It is with these powers that he single-handedly overthrew the Tsar and established the United Soviet Socialist Republics. Now known as Stalin, The Man of Steel, he ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist.
Adolph Hitler, Der Eisenwolf *, launched Operation: Barbarossa on June 22, 1941. Stalin flew to the front to crush the Nazi invasion. The Nazi Ãœbersoldaten knew that they could not stop him. They had a secret weapon: Big Bertha. Among Big Bertha’s multitude of capabilities was a trans-dimensional gateway.
Stalin awoke, dazed and confused. The Nazis had shot him into another reality. Stalin was relieved to discover that he still had his super powers. He set on finding a way back to his dimension.
Believing himself to be once again the most powerful being on the planet, Stalin simply took the materials that he needed. He kidnapped scientists to work on the gateway. Which caught the attention of Earth-1’s true champion: Superman.
Superman continually thwarts Stalin’s attempts to create the portal. Superman knows that if Stalin is successful, he will use the gateway to expand his Communist Empire to more dimensions. Indeed, at the same time that he is trying to get home, Stalin is also trying to take over Earth-1.
* On Alternate Earth-39, Adolph Hitler is a powerful mystic known as Der Eisenwolf (“The Iron Wolf”). He is a master of persuasion who has yet to reveal his full power.
Alternate Earth-11
Kal-El is not the only survivor of Krypton. Stalin believes that he is the true hero and heir to Krypton’s legacy. Superman is a capitalist villain who must learn the error of his ways. Rather than a Fortress of Solitude, Stalin is firmly entrenched in the Kremlin.
Alternate Earth-52
Stalin built the gateway because he is a brutal dictator bent on dominating his earth, the Universe, and beyond.
