Marvel's Red Guardian is essentially the Russian version of Captain America,
and this Soviet agent has always been a morally complicated character. So let's take a deep dive
into the world of Russian superheroes and discover the untold truth of Red Guardian.
"Ha ha ha! Still fits!"
The creation of Alexei Shostakov, aka Red Guardian, or someone like him,
was kind of inevitable. The Cold War was a big part of 1960s Marvel Comics storytelling,
and having a Soviet doppelganger was practically required for the major superheroes.
The Hulk fought the Abomination, a KGB agent who'd been changed by gamma rays into an
even bigger and uglier green monster. Iron Man faced the Crimson Dynamo, a Soviet physicist who
built his own suit of super-armor. Spider-Man even went up against what seemed to be an exact
duplicate of himself, but it turned out to be a Russian super-agent better known as the Chameleon.
Interestingly, Steve Rogers' counterpart first appeared not
in a Captain America comic but in Avengers #43. Stranger still,
the first time Cap and the team encountered Shostakov, they weren't in Russia. Instead,
they found Shostakov in China, where he was working with a Chinese agent named Colonel Ling.
Captain America immediately recognized the Red Guardian as a copy of himself,
which Shostakov acknowledged. Instead of a shield, this Red Guardian had a
detachable belt buckle that he could throw as a weapon and then recall using magnets.
It was a pretty silly 1960s gimmick, but the important thing was that having something
round to throw at his enemies gave him that recognizable Captain America-esque aesthetic.
Although she wouldn't officially join the Avengers until a few years later, the Black
Widow was with Earth's Mightiest Heroes when they first met the Red Guardian. By this time, Widow
had stopped being a KGB spy, and she was a close ally and love interest of the Avenger Hawkeye.
But as soon as she saw the Red Guardian,
Natasha knew she recognized him, but she couldn't believe who he actually was.
It turned out that the husband she'd long thought was dead had been alive all along.
Alexei Shostakov's death was faked by the KGB so that he could be secretly
trained as the Red Guardian. Even though he'd allowed his wife to think he'd died,
he was embittered when he learned she'd defected to the U.S. and was fraternizing
with American superheroes. Natasha remembered her husband as a great Soviet pilot and war hero,
but she was unprepared for the costumed super-brute he'd become.
It's easy to imagine a version of the Red Guardian who stuck around and became one
of Captain America's top villains. He could've antagonized Cap again and again, with a different
scheme each time, like a Cold War equivalent of Captain America's original archenemy,
the Nazi Red Skull. If Stan Lee had still been plotting the Avengers when he was introduced,
that might've happened. By 1967, however, a younger generation of writers was beginning to
take over at Marvel, and Red Guardian co-creator Roy Thomas took things in a different direction.
“Don’t make me come down there, you punk!”
The Red Guardian wasn't a nice guy, and you couldn't call him a superhero. However,
he had a certain nobility to him. After all, how else could he be the first love of someone
like Black Widow, who ultimately turned out to be a hero herself? He also had a measure
of respect for Captain America, the hero who'd inspired his new costumed persona.
So after running into the Avengers in China, Shostakov pulled a pretty impressive move,
sacrificing himself for Black Widow and Captain America. The superheroes were about to escape
amid the complete destruction of a Chinese base, but as they were getting ready to go,
Colonel Ling planned on shooting Captain America in the back. And that's when
Shostakov made a split-second decision to sacrifice his own life to save Cap, Natasha,
and their allies. The Red Guardian may have been a supervillain, but he died like a hero.
The second Red Guardian — who first appeared in The Defenders #35 — wore basically the
same costume as the first, but was different in every other way. First of all, she was a woman,
a Russian neurosurgeon named Dr. Tania Belinsky. Secondly, she wasn't a government operative. In
fact, she used her costumed identity to protect dissidents within the U.S.S.R., as well as
fighting crime. That was a pretty dangerous way to live, so when Doctor Strange brought
her to the United States to perform delicate brain surgery, she decided to stick around.
As the Red Guardian, she became a member of the Defenders and a member of the American
superhero community. Although she disagreed with the oppressive Soviet government,
Tania was herself a communist, which gave her a different perspective on all
sorts of matters from the rest of the Defenders,
who were mostly American capitalists ... plus one Asgardian Valkyrie and an Atlantean prince.
During her time with the Defenders, the Red Guardian was targeted by a Russian
agent who exposed Tania and himself to a high dose of nuclear radiation,
which gave them both superpowers, but it also made them highly radioactive. For a time,
she was under his complete mental control, thanks to his new powers. But ultimately,
Tania helped the Defenders defeat the agent, now known as the Presence.
Unfortunately, the level of radiation she was giving off meant that the Red Guardian had to
isolate herself from humanity to keep from killing everyone around her. In other words,
her days as an active superhero were over, and she had to leave the Defenders.
She would return from time to time over the years, and eventually,
she got her radiation under control and operated under the name Starlight. However,
she was never as prominent a character as during her initial run with the Defenders.
The third Red Guardian first appeared in Captain America #352. Named Josef Petkus,
this Guardian represented a return to the original concept of a Soviet super-agent
and direct counterpart to Captain America. But by his introduction in 1989,
relations between the United States and the Soviet Union were much more civil,
and the relationship between Captain America and the Red Guardian was likewise. There was
tension and a bit of mistrust between the two super-soldiers, but they were ultimately allies.
In fact, the story that introduced the new Red Guardian had him taking Cap on
a walking tour of Moscow, and then they fought a monster that turned out to be
the manifestation of the sublimated powers of another group of forgotten Russian superbeings.
It was a very different sort of story that perfectly represented the sometimes strained
peace that existed between two of the world's superpowers as the Cold War drew to a close.
In a certain sense, the Josef Petkus Red Guardian split the difference between Alexei Shostakov and
Tania Belinsky. Like Shostakov, Petkus worked for the Soviet government and served as a mirror to
Captain America, right down to carrying a shield of his own, instead of a flying belt buckle.
However, like Belinsky, he was a true hero of the Russian people,
not a brutish villain in a superhero's clothes. When he and Cap were strolling through Moscow in
his first appearance, the Guardian was cheered and greeted affectionately by the public,
who regarded him as a greater hero than his American counterpart. He even lifted a little
girl who asked to "fly like a superhero" and tossed the delighted child in the air.
This was a time, even in the primary-colored world of superhero comics,
when Americans were by and large ready to accept that being a communist — even being a
Soviet — didn't mean you were a bad person, and the character of Josef Petkus reflected that.
On December 26, 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed after years of unrest and loosening restrictions.
With no more Soviet government, there could be no more Soviet operatives as
villains or conflicted heroes in comic books set in the present.
Marvel Comics, with their 30-year legacy of Soviet supervillains,
dealt with this by publishing a 1992 one-shot comic aptly titled Soviet Super-Soldiers.
This title told the story of how the various costumed Soviet characters in the Marvel Universe
dealt with the collapse of the state that had given so many of them their powers and identities.
Josef Petkus remained the Red Guardian, and he eventually became part of a reformed
super-team called the Winter Guard, which kept the peace in Russia and around the
world in turbulent times. He eventually changed his name to the Steel Guardian,
and he gave his life in the line of duty, like the hero he'd always been.
For 24 years of Marvel Comics, Alexei Shostakov was regarded as the first
Red Guardian. At some point, however, it occurred to somebody at Marvel that
both Captain America and the Soviet Union had both existed for decades before 1967,
so there was no reason not to have an earlier version of the character.
So 1991's Namor, The Sub-Mariner Annual #1 introduced Aleksey Lebedev,
the Red Guardian of World War II. Naturally, he was an ally of Captain America against the forces
of Nazi Germany. But after the war, Lebedev soon found himself opposing his former allies.
Although his full story has yet to be told, he was said to have been killed
by his own government during the 1950s, revising the origin story of the Alexei
Shostakov Red Guardian to be an attempt to create a more loyal replacement for Lebedev.
As the flagship superhero of Russia, the Red Guardian often seems to be regarded by
Marvel as more of a concept worth keeping around than a fondly remembered character,
and thus, there have been more recent Guardians who were never really developed beyond a costume.
Krassno Granitsky, the fifth Red Guardian, was introduced in Maverick Vol. 2 #10.
After appearing in three issues of that book, he was assassinated by
a KGB general the very next time he showed up, in Captain America Vol. 5 #1.
The sixth Red Guardian first appeared in Hulk Vol. 2 #1,
and the only real name he was ever given was Anton. A member of the Winter Guard,
he was by all accounts kind of a jerk, and he also turned out to be an android.
The seventh and most recent Red Guardian was Nicolai Krylenko,
a Russian superman who was previously known as Vanguard. He first showed up under that name in
1978's Iron Man #109, but he didn't take on the identity of the Red Guardian until Darkstar and
the Winter Guard #3 in 2010 … after Anton the android Red Guardian got his head ripped off.
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