Boris Yeltsin

Few figures from the real world have made the leap into comics quite like Boris Yeltsin, the larger-than-life Russian statesman who first turned up in the pages of Mad in 1996 — right in the thick of that magazine's sharp-elbowed Copper/Modern Age satire — courtesy of the legendary Dave Berg. Over a catalog span stretching surprisingly into 2022, this fictionalized Yeltsin has kept some extraordinary company on the page, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Hillary Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, J. Edgar Hoover, and Mikhail Gorbachev. His most substantial appearance comes in Accidental Czar: The Life and Lies of Vladimir Putin, published by First Second, where he figures into the broader political saga surrounding post-Soviet Russia. A small but vivid presence in the comics world, he's a reminder of how the medium has always delighted in skewering the powerful — and preserving a certain era's geopolitical cast of characters in ink.