Octobriana: Myths from the Underground
Covert artist cells, political dadaism, art theft, and a dissident Communist icon.
Unpicking a tangled web of the real and the imagined from a melting pot of fantastic fiction and incredible facts in one of the most bizarre origin stories of any comic book superhero. This long-read article tracks the story of Octobriana as it careens through hype-art and transmedia metafiction, cold war propaganda and cultural appropriation, deception and fraud, glam rock and punk… the spirit of revolution lives on!
“Try them out, underground boys and girls. Concentrate on them, work hard at it. Remember that Octobriana sees your every movement, hears every sigh. She’s watching you closely and constantly, following every sigh you heave like a secret policeman. Don’t forget for a single moment the revolutionary discovery we have offered you. Never forget that as you read these pages, you become an ‘internal diversionist’.”
Mtsyry, “Lydia Borissovna Gal”, date unknown.
Introduction
A woman takes an enormous kris knife from her side, and leaps off the boat into the freezing water of the sea of Okhotsk. Despite her barely-existent clothing, she doesn’t feel the cold. She plunges her knife into the flesh of a giant walrus; its enormous size is a result of the…
