I always had an interest in flags and general vexillology. Nothing captures the imagination like a well-designed symbol, and nothing inspires patriotic fervor and shuts down critical thinking quite like a national flag. Even if it’s just two colors thrown together randomly, flash national colors and you’ll have a dozen guys lining up behind you to defend the Nation, the Fatherland, and the Great Leader (even if he’s a gremlin with a bad fashion sense).

This post isn’t about these kinds of flags, it’s about the other kinds of flags: Badly rendered flags that make you wonder what the designer was thinking/drinking/snorting at the time. Specifically, flags of the Soviet Union and other communist states, as rendered by rabidly anti-communist propaganda comics in the United States.

How difficult can it be to portray two tools at right angles with a star above? Pretty hard, it turns out.

Big thanks to lcamtuf for his collection of these weird artifacts of a bygone age.

Is This Tomorrow? (1947)

A riveting tale of a communist takeover of the United States that’s as well-illustrated by Peanuts’ Charles Schultz as it is demented. Communists blow up the president, install their stooge, and soon you have US soldiers nationalizing industries, teachers disproving god, labor camps in Alaska, and worst of all, Virgin Mary takes an axe to the face.

Attention to details could be better, as the flags of the newly Communist United States (which, notably, remain United States until the end) when rendered are rather funny. Particularly notable is the exclusion of the star, which explicitly identified the leading character of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. For a comic book that purports to portray a seizure of power just like in Russia, with a vanguard party and all that’s an unsurprising lack of research.

The last flag comes from a separate panel showing how communists take control of trade unions – with absolutely zero resistance from American labor that’s stated explicitly not to be communist by my favorite character, the effeminate, gay-coded Advisor Jones. Worth mentioning that in 1947 being gay was very much illegal in the United States. Unless you stayed in the closet forever, of course.

Rating: 5/10 (C’mon, Schultz, you could have at least gotten the geometry right!)

I Fell For a Commie! (1953)

A short story, where an unemployed woman in love with a man, then learns that he’s a communist and attends meetings where they say horrible things. Horrible things like “it’s not the American people, but the capitalistic system that will bring degradation to this country“, plotting to take over trade unions and pass legislation favorable to their cause, and generally criticizing the government. Fortunately, the guy she loves actually turns out to be a secret policeman and the people unappreciative of the “privileges of freedom” (like, unemployment, I guess?) are arrested by the comics’ end for plotting the violent overthrow of the United States.

Bonus points for attempting to render the actual handle on the sickle, emphasis on attempting. Sickles generally aren’t built that way – some nonsense about weak points and such – but what amuses and terrifies me is that it seems to be the red-headed child of a one night stand between the Japanese national flag and the state flag of the Soviet Union. The flag a couple of pages later is marginally better.

Rating: 3/10 (an attempt was made, though I have no idea why the author elected to drag Imperial Japan into this; bonus points for having a policeman saying “all the privileges of freedom and they bite the hand that gives it to them” about people lining up for unemployment and daring to complain)

The Plot to Steal the World (1948)

The usual anti-communist propaganda comic notable for two things: The guest appearance of J. Edgar Hoover (not a fan of freedom of democracy and that’s putting it mildly) and one of the earliest applications of a smear tactic called “you’re ugly, therefore wrong“, with Wojak-style commies juxtaposed with meticulously rendered Hoover and other luminaries.

There’s only one real design (with a single wall poster having the usual gold-and-red colors), shared across the Eastern Bloc. Of course, without differentiating, we’re all just one huge mass of Russians in the East, didn’t you know? And as usual, despite the emphasis on a small group of people holding the actual power, the star is nowhere to be seen.

Rating: 5/10 (it’s just average)

This Godless Communism (1961)

One of my favorite titles, opening with a feverish look at how communist USA would look. The United Soviet States of America (USSA) is plagued by godlessness taught in schools (not just a pedestrian school like St. Joseph’s, but Soviet School 32), gainfully employed women with impeccable fashion sense (see below), and public nurseries and daycares. Oh, and the communists blew up Washington D.C. landmarks, because of course they did. Sounds like J. Edgar Hoover… What was it? He wrote a letter of introduction for the comic? That explains a lot.

I’m probably biased by the sharp-dressed teacher here (seriously, I am stealing that look the moment HRT takes root), but this is one of my favorite designs in terms of weird flags. It’s not even a badly designed flag, as it preserves the thirteen stripes which represent the thirteen colonies and thus the American Revolution, replacing the canton with the states’ stars with a single hammer and sickle that also has a star to signify the vanguard party.

Together, this suggests the idea of a Second American Revolution, except communist this time. Together it shows that Reed Crandall really decided to sit for a few moments and think. This alone makes it a non-horrible design.

The armbands are virtually identical to those in The Plot to Steal the World, and the rest of the comic features fairly decent portrayals of Soviet flags. It even includes the star, though it tends to hop all over the place. Guys, it’s above. Not to the left, not to the right, above.

The comic is still a work of propaganda, though, and blessed by Hoover himself, so while it tries to stay factual and accurate, it ends up… Well, it ends up with Trotsky assassinated with a mining pick by a sombrero-wearing Mexican Stalin agent (um) and parroting Stalinist propaganda about Ukrainian peasantry killing itself during the Holodomor.

Rating: 10/10 (I’m sorry, I’m in love with that dress)

Threat to Freedom (1965)

Purporting to be a comic book “exposing communism”, this comic has an actual plot, focusing on Sunday school kids (for the non-Americans, it’s basically a Christian madrasa unique to the US) listening to a pastor spin his tale. Of course, the greatest evil is the devil, namely, the atheism of the Soviet Union, and all of the problems are caused by the rejection of the word of Christ. Oh, and it’s back to form with this one.

The designs are the usual “good enough” approach to flags, slapping together a hammer, a sickle, and calling it a day. The pink flag is new, though applying the red-and-black flag to the entire Central Europe is not. What does get me every time is applying post-War borders to a wartime map. Speaks volumes about the research does it not?

While working on this article, I noticed a couple of similarities with This Godless Communism. After a closer inspection, I realized that the similarities are there because Bill Martin, the artist responsible for this wonderful piece of propaganda basically traced entire panels from Reed Crandall’s work. Though his version of The Death of Leon is slightly less demented, but no less hilarious, repeating Stalinist propaganda is just… Wrong.

Rating: 0/10 (tracing and plagiarizing is a huge no-no; guess the seventh commandment was the seventh suggestion in this case?)

Steel Panthers (1995)

Bad flags aren’t limited to just comics, of course, though many of the not-so-great designs are due to technical limitations, rather than lack of attention on part of the writers. Steel Panthers, as an SSI game, definitely does its research, but still features some fun designs.

It’s not a terrible design and there’s a certain amount of charm in it. Bonus points for actually including the star in the flag. I’m not actually sure why they decided on this angle, given that Panzer General, released a year prior, featured a correctly aligned arrangement of tools. Oh well.

Rating: 8/10 (it’s a decent design and look, after all)

Command & Conquer: Red Alert (1996)

One of my favorite games (I mean, come on, how many games exist where you can kill Stalin, with outright taking over with the explicit approval of an ancient alien?). The game has its numerous idiosyncrasies, not the least of which is using a post-World War II map of Europe in a setting where World War II never happened, and largely ignoring the massive ramifications of fascism not murdering tens of millions of Europeans, including tens of million of Soviet citizens…

On the plus side, it does have a socialist Germany fighting the USSR – and one of my favorite portrayals of Stalin in media. Eugene Dynarski shines here, with a low-key portrayal of the Georgian monster – balancing charisma and confidence with the limitless capacity for cruelty and brutality. Red Alert might be remembered as the wackier cousin of C&C, but the first Red Alert is incredibly dark (I do love both Nicholas Worth and Tim Curry, though they’re in a wholly separate league).

While we don’t really get a good look at the flag, it’s plain in the shots of the People’s Revolutionary Headquarters that it’s not your usual flag of the USSR. Basing on the pins, it probably looks like this:

I dig this design, even if the sickle is one of those horrific designs that really doesn’t work, except as a neat illustration, and a hammer that’s… A sledgehammer, I guess? It does fit an alternate timeline, though, especially one where the USSR is an emanation of the Brotherhood of Nod and was at one point called the Brotherhood of Soviet Republics (seriously, read the script). It’s definitely better than what they went with initially:

What in the name of all that is holy is this result of a drunken one night stand between the Roman Empire, United Nations, and the USSR?

Rating: 9/10 (dig the design, but docking a point for the dumb sickle, which is truly horrible, no good, very bad)