My first real exposure to the Red Sonja character was the 1985 movie starring Brigitte Nielsen as the battling barbarian. To those who are late to the party, female-led superhero films and TV shows started long before the current Marvel, DC franchises. Red Sonja, Tank Girl, Barb Wire and even television shows like the Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman and The Secrets of Isis headline a legacy that goes all the way back to the seventies.
The Red Sonja movie and Brigitte Nielsen’s portrayal stayed with me and I began checking out the Marvel comics by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith but lost all interest in the character when Gail Simone made unnecessary changes to her origin, backstory including removing the mystical elements. For me, it was a low point for the character and the series so like a Level 10 Magic-User, I made Red Sonja disappear from my pull list.
Bringing Amy Chu and Erik Burnham’s words to life, Carlos Gomez and Vincenzo Federici’s art is as fierce, bold and sexy and as Red Sonja herself is. There are times when you do notice a difference in the art style but it is not disjointed or disconnected in any way. If you can, grab the edition with Babs Tarr’s killer cover though (pictured above).
Come on, someone give Babs a flagship, ongoing series.
This is another issue in Amy Chu’s Red Sonja run that is intense, amusing and at times even a bit thoughtful. If there is another Red Sonja film on the horizon – with Emily Beecham, ‘The Widow’ in Into the Badlands, as Sonja, perhaps? – Chu’s take on the character, her tales of swords and sorcery would be the perfect source material for a momentus cinematic return of the “She-Devil with a Sword”.
Summary
If Conan, Kull, Dungeons and Dragons, The Warlord and Elfquest are your thing, so is this. In fact, why aren’t you collecting Red Sonja already, by Crom? Stars and stones. Sigh.
