Every Thursday, mightygodking.com returns to the pages of Who’s Who, the classic 1980s DC comic book encyclopedia of their characters. Every week, a character shall be judged on the only scale scientific enough that matters: the Rex The Wonder Dog scale of fantasticosity.
Why? Because he is a super-powered Stalin lookalike.
Now, admittedly, this is not quite as cool as a Russian graduate student with no powers who idolizes Stalin and uses Stalin’s image to commit crimes, or the actual Stalin himself as a sorcerer fighting Black Magic Hitler. (And, curiously, with a bit of a speech impediment.) But Stalnoivolk is pretty damn cool, even if he is not at the apex of coolness.
I mean, he does all his supering in a nice suit. Don’t we all often wish that more superheroes just did their jobs while wearing nice suits? After seeing a number of Marvel movies, you begin to appreciate that tights look kind of silly sometimes, and not everybody has to wear them. So let’s give praise to Stalnoivolk for wearing a nice three-piece.
However, Stalnoivolk has also met up with Deadshot, and indeed been out-badassed by Mr. Floyd Lawton. While this is no great crime (after all, being out-badassed by Deadshot is pretty common, because Deadshot is totally badass), it does mean that when assessing Stalnoivolk’s rating, we have to take into account that he is definitely below Deadshot’s tier.
Thus:
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I’m surprised he never tussled with Uncle Sam and the freedom fighters. It’s almost a shame he has to be a part of Firestorm’s rogues gallery.
I originally read that as “Stalinovolk” and was thinking “What? DC made a “Stalin For The People” character and used bad GERMAN to make the name instead of bad Russian?
I was thinking this was just about right for DC’s quality control, actually.
Excellent call. Stalinovolk is pretty damn badass, even by the exceptionally high standards of Suicide Squad. He rocks the hell out of that mustache.
But why is he wearing a nice suit? Stalin didn’t wear nice suits. He wore knee high boot… ah. “Undertones.” Got you.
It’s a wonder Rucka never used him in Checkmate.
Stalinvolk vs. Batman was a favourite bit of mine in Suicide Squad.
Suicide Squad rocked.
Edit: I mean, of course, the first volume of Suicide Squad. The new Ostrander mini-series is also good.
Suicide Squad 2.0 Giffen, et al. — no. Just no.
Speaking as a Russian:
“Staynoy Volk” is two words, not one. I mean, I am happy that DC gave a Russian superhero a name that actually makes sense in the original Russian, but would it kill them to get the rest right? And if they were going for one of those combined 80s superhero names… those rarely work in Russian language.
>And, curiously, with a bit of a speech impediment.
The “speech impairment” is a translator’s attempt to convey Stalin’s heavy Georgian accent. He was quite infamous for it back when he was alive, inspiring all sorts of jokes.
Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but that is NOT a nice three-piece suit. It’s a quite nice two-piece suit, and he wears it well, but without a vest it’s not a three-piece.
Men’s fashion is in enough of a sadly degraded state–let’s not exacerbate things by losing our terminology.
The suit itself may be nice, but a mustard shirt and a baby blue tie? Who dresses him, Brezhnev? Also, I originally read the translation of his name as “Steel Wool”, which is distinctly UNbadass, but that really just means I don’t like to read all the little letters in the words right. And I’m not convinced of someone’s badassery when one of their memorable super powers is basically that he can jump real good.
Superman used to be memorable for being able to jump well – before he was given the ability to fly.
Where do you think “leap over tall buildings in a single bound” came from?
I see he lost points for his name being hard to spell. Does he gain any for being able to lean on things that aren’t really there? See, that flag he’s got his hand on in colored to match the background, so unless there’s a giant headshot him, and another smaller him looking at a downed Firestorm then that flag isn’t there.
I wonder if Firestorm ever altered his suits into standard superhero tights. I bet that’d piss him off.
And also one of Hulk’s best known powers is he can jump real good.
Jumping STILL doesn’t impress me. It’s at least more eccentric than flying, which is a dime a dozen as far as superpowers go, but it has a bargain basement feel to it. Like Wolverine being able to smell real good. Ooh, Logan, you have the power of… my dog! I’m just saying, if I were Steel Wool, I’d be talking up the bullet proof stuff more (even though that’s kind of a disappointment too, I mean, small arms fire ONLY? Get with the times, grandpa!).
I still prefer Walt Simonson’s giant disney RoboStalin. From an alternate universe.