If you've never encountered the Russian devil-woman before... prepare to be amazed. Octobriana is not just one of the coolest characters in comics, she has one of the strangest back-stories ever heard. To be a successful superhero, a character has to be very iconic (it's one of the defining principals) and Octobriana fills this role very well. The ultimate communist superhero, the idea of her adventures being read by devoted fans behind the Iron Curtain in secret in the late sixties, fires the imagination. The idea of a kind of Russian version of Wonder Woman actually being created in the USSR and her creators living in fear of being arrested for drawing the heroine is the stuff of comic's legend. Coupled with that her non-copyright status adds the extra thrill that anyone (I mean anyone at all!) can use her, which just makes her one of the greatest characters of twentieth-century comics! But, hang on, I'm getting ahead of myself here. Where does our story begin? For the past 30 years comics readers and comics creators alike have thrilled to the ideas Czech writer, Petr Sadecky, presented in his 1971 book OCTOBRIANA AND THE RUSSIAN UNDERGROUND. British publisher Tom Stacey Ltd were apparently already known for their anti-communist leanings from other books published under their imprint when the young Czech approached them that year. Sadecky came to them with a fantastic tale of a sub-hippy-style movement behind the iron curtain in the 1960's. Organised into cells across the USSR, this secret underground, known as the Progressive Political Pornography Group (or PPP for short), kept in touch by the secret samizdat (private press) publication called MTSYRY. They got drunk, spoke out against the Soviet authorities, had orgies and created comics strips about OCTOBRIANA. Next Page, Comrade!