Well now that's just cool!

Interesting how you can tell who are the good guys and who are the evil-doers based on facial expression, uniform, heroic figure -- just like the 'free western' countries of the time.. an almost simplistic-comic vision of a hero.
Somehow I kind of figured that Soviet drawings would be more intellectual and realistic (whatever that means) - kind of like a lot of the writing/films - like Solaris.
Still - Pulp is Pulp wherever you go, i guess...

That stuff is reet swank.

Mao era art is all the rage with hipsters and yuppies. They think its kitsch. I just can't get behind that, these regimes killed millions.

I stick with Amazing Stories covers.

I do covet my First Day Issue stamp and envelope, commemorating the Soyuz-Apollo linkup, signed by a Russian pilot during the Knight's only visit to the US.

To each his own hypocrisy, I guess.

This reminds me, I've got a copy of "First Spaceship on Venus" on VHS somewhere...

@Seth L: The art and fiction were produced by the downtrodden citizens under these regimes, not the regimes themselves.

It would be interesting to read some of the Russian pulp, just to see what changes from Western pulp. One of my favorite gumshoe books is "Inspector Imanishi Investigates", a pulp mystery written during the 1950's in Japan. It was fascinating to see a genre built around the art of interrogation translated to a culture that generally considered even the most mildly intrusive questions to be unspeakably rude. I imagine Russian pulp would face similar challenges.

I'll back up everyone who thinks this is really slick but uh...what the hell is going on here:

[io9.com]

I mean...really?

@Seth L: There was a brief period in the 60s and 70s when Nazi stuff was considered kitsch among the artsy-fartsy crowd too. I don't know, maybe that's just some sort of cultural movement that just has to happen collectively in order to rob these horrible events of their power--a collective catharsis.

Maybe there were people back during the Enlightenment that were parodying the horrors of the Reformation and Counter Reformation. ("Cold is God's way of telling us to burn more Catholics!")

Whatever. Humans are perverse.

Nice stuff.

Graphic arts were probably the best thing to come out of the Soviet Union.

That, and Ekranoplans.

-Kle.