Octobriana


Octobriana is a Russian comic superheroine created by Petr Sadecký and based on works by Bohumil Konečný and Zdeněk Burian. As a character embodying Communist ideals, Octobriana was said to be usable by anyone who wanted, rather than being copyrighted by an author or corporation. This made her, in part, the inspiration for the creation of Jenny Everywhere. Petr Sadecký had created a fictitious real life origin for the character, which he presented as true.

''Octobriana and the Russian Underground''

In Octobriana and the Russian Underground, Sadecký describes the PPP as a loose group of cells, not only in Russia, but throughout the Soviet Union. This group, Sadecký wrote, started around 1957, after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956. At first they called themselves Progressivnaya Politika and tried to go back to the pure principles of the White movement and their Scandinavian roots; the Rus' people. They were descendants of the Vikings.
Later they put together samizdat comics about the superheroine Octobriana, a character said to embody the principles of the Russian Revolution and battle against both Russian and American oppression. Sadecky provided a history for Octobriana where she is said to be thousands of years old and the child of a Viking and a Toltec princes, whose original name was Mahari. She was given radiation treatments that made her immortal and reborn as a superhuman in a radioactive volcano. Her ethnicity has often shifted; the initial Amazona character seems to have been a confused mix of different indigenous backgrounds. In Sadecky's book, she was said to have Mongolian features. Later portrayals have often ignored this and rendered her as white.
Sadecky portrayed her as a legendary figure who has been sighted throughout history; there are reports from Siberia, Spain in the time of the Spanish Inquisition, Chinese explorer Zhang Qian, and an unpublished book by left wing Moroccan politician Mehdi Ben Barka. She has been called The White She-Dragon, The Girl with the White Face Coming from the Sky, The Mother of the Seven Red Stars, Angelic Maiden who Turned into a Devil, the Avenger. It is said that she comes from an ancient civilization and was granted immortality by radiation treatments, then underwent an ordeal in a radioactive volcano which transformed her into a superhuman being. She pilots the Wonder Machine, which travels through time and space, crewed by Native Americans. Her weapons and equipment include a Smith & Wesson revolver, a kris knife, and a shark-tooth necklace which can detect radiation.
One story was "The Living Sphinx of the Kamchatka Radioactive Volcano 1934", in which she swims into a radioactive volcano and kills a giant walrus with her kris. Afterwards she brings the tribesmen of the Koryaks home with a giant flying ball. Another story was titled "Octobriana and the Atomic Suns".

The Octobriana hoax

The supposed origin of the character was in actuality Sadecký's own creation. Petr Sadecký, while still in Prague, enlisted the help of two Czech artists, Bohumil Konečný and Zdeněk Burian, in creating a comic centering on the character of "Amazona." Sadecký told the two that he had a buyer interested in the comic, and they worked together on writing and illustrating the Amazona comic. However, Sadecký betrayed his friends by stealing all the artwork and escaping to the West where, in his efforts to market the Amazona comic, he changed the dialogue, drew a red star on the character's forehead, and was successful only after turning Amazona into a fake political statement, "Octobriana: the spirit of the October Revolution". Major inconsistencies in his story, and a frame in his book where Octobriana is referred to as "Amazona", lend credence to this story. In addition, Burian and Konečný sued Sadecký in a West German court, winning the case but never recovering all their stolen artwork.
As Octobriana is still widely believed to be the product of dissident cells within the U.S.S.R., she is not copyrighted, and has appeared in a variety of artistic incarnations.

Other appearances

Comics

Appearances in other comics include:
Other appearances include: