Superman: Red Son is a comic book published by DC Comics unveiled under their Elseworlds imprint in April, 2003.

Author Mark Millar created the comic under the premise of, "What if Superman had been raised in the Soviet Union?"

He was inspired by a notion he had when he was younger of Superman's rocket touching down in neutral waters between the US and the Soviet Union with both nations rushing to claim it.

In "Red Son", Superman lands on a Ukrainian collective farm. Instead of fighting for freedom and the American Way, he takes a firm belief in workers' rights and the struggle for global equality, and sets out to promote communism throughout the world. He grows up to be Josef Stalin's personal bodyguard, and ends up reluctantly taking over the country at the request of the people with the goal of making the world a better place.

In America, Nixon beats Kennedy for the presidency, and is assassinated in 1963; Kennedy instead grows old with Marilyn Monroe. As communism gains in power, America becomes the last bastion of capitalism as Lex Luthor gains the presidency. The country descends into a fragmented failure that parodies the modern Eastern Bloc nations.

The DC universe is reinvented in "Red Son". Superman's girlfriend is Wonder Woman, who is a Soviet diplomat. Jimmy Olsen does not work for the Daily Planet, but instead ends up as a government agent; meanwhile, Oliver Queen ends up working for the Daily Planet instead of becoming the Green Arrow. Batman is a child of Russian dissidents whose parents were murdered by the state, and who takes on a terrorist/freedom fighter role. The Bottle City of Kandor is replaced by Stalingrad.

Seeing the struggle for a better world as his life's goal, he uses his powers to see and hear everything in an Orwellian style to reform the world, even performing surgery to remedy people who do not agree with him. In the end, after a 10,000 year rule, not a piece of litter has been dropped on the ground and Superman experiences, to quote Millar, "a God is Dead moment".

Red Son was written largely as a political commentary on recent actions taken by America, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It questions a world in which one superpower attempts to force its vision of the world on everyone else to make the world a better place. "The moral implications of one man or one country policing the entire world then becomes the big question.", wrote Millar. "Like Bush, Cheney and Ashcroft, Superman finds himself wondering if total control is the best thing for the safety of the people he really wants to protect."

The release of Red Son was delayed due to the controversy of its release on the heels of the war with Iraq. "Drawing images of Superman tearing down the stars and stripes and kicking in the Whitehouse doors with a hammer and sickle on his chest is the equivalent of making a joke about Princess Diana at her funeral," Millar said. Over 40,000 copies had been reserved before its publication.