In May 2025, news spread across the RuNet: a comic book was being sold on the shelves of American stores in which the presidents of Russia and Ukraine turn into animals. We have verified the accuracy of such messages.
According to posts in Russian-language Telegram channels, a comic book about the Russian president allegedly published in the United States is called The Incredible Putin-Bear, which translates as “Incredible Putin the Bear” (however, in most publications the title brought with a mistake in the first word - “incredible”). It is reported that according to the plot, the politician can either angry, either optional turning into a bear - almost like the title character of the series "The Incredible Hulk" Other characters in the comic include US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Telegram channel «Tsargrad-TV"(79,000 views at the time of writing this analysis) clarified that the latter was also given a superpower - according to the plot, when Zelensky is afraid, he turns into a lemur and hides in trash cans. The channel added that it is unknown whether such a book actually appeared on the shelves of American stores, but emphasized: “But the situation described in the comic looks quite plausible.” According to some bloggers, the appearance of this comic proves that in the West Putin respect And heroize.
According to the TGStat service, at the time of writing this analysis, about 120 similar posts appeared on Telegram, which in total collected more than 900,000 views. Among others, the channels “Uncle Slava"(182,000 views), Voblya (115,000), "Angry journalist"(44,000), "Actually in Kharkov"(33,000), "Russia 2.0" (31,000), "Boiling water"(26,000), etc. The news is also found on VKontakte (examples here, here And here), LiveJournal, "Odnoklassniki"and on some news websites.
None of the publications mentioned above specified which store or even city in the United States sells “The Incredible Putin the Bear.” “Verified” did not find any mention or evidence of the existence of such a comic on any specialized website. At the same time discover in stores similar works, for example, about Trump, were not difficult.
Viral posts are usually accompanied by two pictures, from which it is impossible to determine where they were taken. The first shows the cover of the comic, which does not have the name or logo of any American publisher. The image shows only the name of the alleged author - Harvey Baker (apparently, he acted as both a screenwriter and an artist). However, a comic artist with such a name and surname is not mentioned on thematic sites and in comics databases. Lived and worked in the USA Harvey Picard (in some translations Baker, and Baker translates from English as “baker”) is a writer best known as the author of the autobiographical comic book series American Splendor, but he passed away back in 2010. However, it can be assumed that “The Incredible Putin the Bear” is samizdat, published under a pseudonym.
The second photo shows a couple of black and white pages from The Incredible Putin the Bear. It is noteworthy that they are almost completely absent match bubbles — bubbles with remarks or thoughts of characters, typical for comics. The entire text is collected in three narrative blocks — rectangles where the narrator shares exposition and other important information with readers.
"It was the fourth hour of negotiations when in the next office PUTIN-BEAR noticed... ZELENSKY! PUTIN-BEAR immediately took on his BATTLE FORM.
However, Zelensky has an ace up his sleeve. He can turn into... A WILY LEmur.
This ability has saved Zelensky’s life more than once. But this time he was unlucky and ended up buried under heaps of stinking garbage.”
In the Western tradition, comic book artists have panels with pictures so that the reader moves along the page in the same way as when reading a regular book: from left to right and from top to bottom. Of course, sometimes authors, for one reason or another, complicate frame structure, but this can create problems with understanding the sequence of events. In the case of The Incredible Putin Bear, the panels are arranged in an uncharacteristic chaotic order for a comic book. In addition, two drawings and one narrative block are located at the junction of the pages.
Upon closer examination of the panels, questions arise about the drawings themselves. For example, in one of the frames Zelensky is shown without a mustache and wearing a shirt and tie, although before and after this moment he is shown unshaven and wearing different clothes. Additionally, Trump and Putin shaking hands appear to be missing fingers, and in one panel, a lemur's tail grows straight out of his neck. Such errors are typical for images generated by a neural network.
“Verified” analyzed the comic book cover photo using five AI image detectors. All of them rated the likelihood that the drawing was created using a neural network as extremely high. At the same time, checking both the full snapshot with pages and its fragments in the same services gave conflicting results. This may well be due to the lower quality of this photo and the fact that some of the drawings there are darkened or distorted due to the folding of the paper they are printed on. In addition, detectors like show studies can sometimes produce both false-positive and false-negative results.
The earliest post about an allegedly American comic (among those that were able to track “Verified”) appeared on May 23 at 13:29 Moscow time in the Telegram channel “Batkovich"(33,000 views). Previously this channel mentioned as a distributor of fakes in ten of our analyses. Soon after “Batkovich” they also talked about Putin the Bear Fine familiar to our regular readers "New 🅉 Ukraine"(40,000 views) and "Shaman Rahu"(7000) - there the viral pictures were published after 3 and 11 minutes. respectively.
Thus, there is no convincing evidence that American stores are selling a comic where Putin turns into a bear and Zelensky into a lemur. Initially, Russian Telegram channels wrote about this, citing two photographs taken in an unknown place as confirmation. The pictures themselves show the cover and only two pages of a comic book, in which some basic rules for creating such works are violated, and the drawings show signs of the use of AI.
Cover photo: social networks
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