Two-dimensional MEPs reinvented as animated superheroes

She is female, shapely and on an eco-mission that has infuriated the chemical industry. Irina may look like Lara Croft, but Europe's latest animated heroine has one key difference: she is an MEP.

The European Parliament, in an effort to shed its image as the gravy train on a magic roundabout, is publishing 500,000 copies of a hardback comic-strip book of Irina's battles to save the continent from pollution of its water supply.

Troubled Waters has appeared in English and French and is to be translated into all 11 official languages of the EU. But the book has provoked a fierce complaint from the chemical industry, which says its image is being tarnished by the comic heroine.

The backdrop to much of the action, directed at the EU's younger citizens, will be unfamiliar to them, with the parliaments' sites in Brussels and Strasbourg, as well as local restaurants and hotels, featuring prominently.

Nor is the dialogue always riveting. One of Irina's less than immortal lines reads: "The report is currently on its second reading. So we have to reach agreement with the Council, if necessary, via a conciliation committee." But its supporters say it is a vital tool in the battle to communicate with the next generation of voters. Rejecting complaints from the European chemical industry council, Pat Cox, the president of the European Parliament, described Troubled Waters as "an attractive, original way of explaining the European Parliament's role in the EU's institutional procedures, primarily for the benefit of young people".

David Harley, spokesman for Mr Cox, said the books, which cost €0.80 each to produce, were free and much in demand. The French version has been particularly popular with language teachers, he added, and the print run could be increased. "At last somebody has the courage to do something which may be controversial but helps young people to understand what is going on in the ( EU) institutions," he said.

Michael Cashman the Labour MEP and former EastEnders actor, said: "Unless we try something new we will never succeed in reconnecting with our citizens. At least we are explaining what we are doing; they're not even trying at Westminster."