Activists from A Just Russia have begun distributing comics featuring the party's leader, Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov, doing comical battle with his political rivals ahead of Sunday's City Duma elections.
The comics featuring Mironov come after anonymous web fans began an Internet comic strip this summer featuring State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, who leads the ruling United Russia party, fighting his archnemesis, the "Black Oligarch."
In one of the Just Russia cartoons, Mironov is using a vacuum cleaner to try to suck away a chicken leg being eaten by Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov. In another, Mironov is depicted building a house for a young couple who are kissing, while the Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky is brandishing a rifle and kicking the bride in the butt.
The cartoons, with dialogue in verse, were posted on the web site of the Novy Region news agency Friday.
Just Russia activists distributed the booklet of comic strips near the city's metro stations in the last several days, Novy Region reported. Under elections laws, they will have to stop distributing the booklets Saturday.
The Gryzlov-Man comics, which first appeared in June, featured the lawmaker as a Batman-like hero saving Moscow from a fire and the explosion of a natural gas pipeline.
In later editions, Gryzlov dealt with other current events, including the Sayano-Shushenskaya dam disaster, the shooting rampage of police Major Denis Yevsyukov and an angry speech by President Dmitry Medvedev directed at his Ukrainian counterpart, Viktor Yushchenko.
The Communist Party often posts cartoons on its official web site that feature Zyuganov decrying the initiatives of the country's leadership.
Ahead of the 2007 parliamentary elections, the Communists issued a book of comics featuring Zyuganov and his political opponents titled "Political Miniatures from Zyuganov." That year, Zyuganov also released a book of jokes about United Russia and then-President Vladimir Putin, titled "100 Jokes From Zyuganov."
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