Pretty meh. The writing is dull, although thorough. The artwork is utilitarian. ( )

Vladimir Putin at heart is a gangster who would have been at home as a character on The Sopranos according to this biography. It's a laundry list of all the murders, false flag operations, political corruption, theft, conspiracies and wars it seems likely that Putin has masterminded in his life from KGB agent to Russian dictator.

The book is a little dry -- caption heavy with static art that mostly consists of floating heads -- but the litany of harm this man has done to the world is still stomach turning. In a dark coincidence, this book was basically published just as Putin began his invasion of Ukraine, so that chapter is missing. ( )

Concise history and overview of Putin's rise to power, including the history behind it. I found myself making connections between events that I was aware of the time, but didn't realize how they contributed to Putin's rise. An excellent graphic recounting of recent history. ( )

The Rise of Putler
Review of the Drawn & Quarterly paperback edition (February 15, 2022) of the original Myriad Editions paperback (UK) (September 16, 2021)

Darryl Cunningham's non-fiction graphic novel charts the rise of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin from his early days in Leningrad, the years working for the KGB, the first major embezzlements while working for Leningrad's Mayor, the apprenticeship under Boris Yeltsin, the usurping of the Presidency and then the ever increasing list of scams, murders, imprisonments, false flag attacks on his own people and the more recent years of attempting to restore the imperium of the former Soviet Union by either election manipulation or war in former Republics such as Belarus, Georgia, Chechnya and the Ukraine. Presciently the book was published in late 2021 in the UK, and then uncannily in North America just on the eve of the current Ukrainian invasion in February 2022.

As I write this in mid-September 2022 during the current Ukrainian counterattack which is regaining major areas of occupied Ukraine, it remains to be seen whether Putin's miscalculation will be the beginning of his downfall. The ugly precedents with Hitler are most obvious to those who have studied the history of Nazi Germany. These are such as Hitler's false flag torching of the German Reichstag in 1933 paralleled with Putin's KGB/FSB's bombing of Russian apartment buildings in 1999. There is Neville Chamberlain's 1938 appeasement with Hitler and writing off then -Czechoslovakia, paralleled with the shameful groveling of various European leaders to not humiliate Putin and allow his conquering of Ukraine in the current conflict. We can only hope that Hitler's downfall and end will be paralleled as well.

Cunningham's research is extremely thorough and is demonstrated by the extensive list of sources at the end of the book. Those who are familiar with the propaganda iconography of Putin will recognize that drawings in the book parallel real life events recorded on news film and photographs as can be seen in the examples below.

See sample page at https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-URkH9PWvlBk/YDOogOmemRI/AAAAAAAADGk/AA5btZS0oyUfH4IE0...
Sample page from "Putin's Russia". Image sourced from Darryl Cunningham Blogspot.

See photograph at https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.24415cd609f2baeaefcfe4e8da3cf40f?rik=B5xmcGlH%2bi2az...
Photograph of Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. ( )