Red Sonja Free Comic Book Day 2023
“His Master's Voice”
Writer: Torunn Grønbekk
Artist: Walter Geovani
Colorist: Omi Remalante Jr.
Letterer: Simon Bowland
Cover: Nick Bradshaw
Editor: Joseph Rybandt
“The Temple of Abomination”
Writer/editor: Roy Thomas
Artist: Dick Giordano
Colorist: Michelle Wolfman
Letterer: Cathi Ann Thomas
Co-executive editors: Rybandt and Luke
Lieberman
Published by: Dynamite
Released: May 6, 2023
Red Sonja is a sword-wielding heroine created by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith in 1973 as part of Marvel's comics line based on author Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian. She was also based in part on Howard's Red Sonya of Rogatino, introduced in a 1934 short story that appeared in “The Magic Carpet Magazine.”
I did at least meet Red Sonja in a Marvel comic, but it was about 17 years after her debut, in an issue of “What If...?” featuring a battle between Conan and Wolverine. Mild spoiler alerts – Logan crosses paths with Sonja because his secondary mutation is detecting volatile redheads and Conan accidentally destroys the universe because it's an issue of What If.
But I don't think I read anything else featuring the character until I remembered I had snagged this issue on a past Free Comic Book Day. Now seems like a good time to feature it for #FreeComicFriday because there's a new Red Sonja movie out... or there was? I was trying to figure out when to go see it because Mark Radulich volun-told me I'm doing a podcast with him about it. And since I have to at least pretend to know something about the comic book source material on Mark's shows, I'd better get cracking. But the Internet tells me it's only going to be in American theaters for a day before going to video on demand, which I'm sure bodes well for the quality of the film.
Fortunately, this issue gives me a sample of classic and contemporary Red Sonja storytelling. No longer under the Marvel umbrella, her stories are being told these days at Dynamite. The first issue kicks off what I presume is a new era/storyline by Grønbekk, who frankly sounds like he should be a character in one of the stories.
Before the title character arrives in the setting of Madauros on page 4, we see it through the eyes of a woman dressed in brown robes, who has come there for a seemingly dark reason and also doesn't have much faith in the gods she was raised to worship. Madauros is a place where justice is on display, literally, in the heads of murderer and the hands of thieves nailed to board, alongside, well, it doesn't take much to imagine what of rapists.
Red Sonja stables her horse with Aratus, a young man who is smitten with her because he has eyes. She gently rebuffs his flirting because, if memory serves, she won't marry a man unless he bests her in combat.* Sonja is looking for the new arrival in town, who turns out to be the Lady Alaberta, on the run from her husband's soldiers. Seems she's cursed and it has something to do with a stone she gives Sonja.
Once she hands the rock over, she's struck down by an invisible sword, and the men hunting her burst in just in time to find the she-devil with a sword** kneeling over the body.
Soon Sonja is on the run, getting an assist from the love-struck Aratus, who is suddenly overcome by a mysterious force that causes him to attack her. He breaks the spell long enough to plunge Sonja's sword into his gut, prompting her to swear vengeance as she flees the pursuing soldiers.
It works well as an interesting setup and introduction to the character. Aside from witnessing her overwhelming combat skills, we see that she has a code of honor, but doesn't consider herself “decent people.”
Am I supposed to mention her costume? It's a chain-mail bikini. Her gloves and boots provide more protection. I don't know if commenting on it makes me guilty of invoking the “male gaze,”*** or if I should just accept that she likes it and not wonder how she fares in winter.
The second story is reprinted from 1975's “Marvel Feature” #1, written by Thomas and drawn by Giordano. “Freely adapted” from a Howard short story, it finds Sonja riding through a pleasant-sounding forest called Darkwood, somehow wearing even less than in the contemporary tale. I'm not sure why she's on this road, but it leads her to the titular temple, in whose eerie halls she's attacked by … (Googles man's body with hooves) … a satyr.
She makes short work of him with a dagger, but it's her sword that saves her when a trap door drops beneath her feet in another room. Pulling herself out of the opening, she hears the pained groans of a chained-up priest. She does him the solid of putting him out of his miseries since his own beliefs frown on doing it himself.
Eerie music heralds the arrival of a lot more satyrs, who Sonja slices and dices before finding the ringleader, playing the pipes that are making the aforementioned music. Like a grumpy old man telling the kids to get off his lawn with their rap music, she shatters the pipes with her blade.
It turns out the pipes were what was making the satyrs attack; now they're frozen in place. Only the now pipe-less piper is still in the fight, and he's frankly no match for our heroine. She drives him back until he plunges into the pit revealed by the trap door, where he's devoured by whatever was lurking in its dark depths.
What I gleaned from these two stories is that Red Sonja is not someone to be trifled with, and she can cause plenty of trouble for any man, beast and anything in between with whom she finds herself at odds. A solid introduction to the character, and the free issue showcases some 48 trades featuring her adventures. I'm not sure that it would pique my interest enough on its own to check them out – I've got nothing against sword and sorcery but it's not my go-to genre. Still, the fact that I have a podcast to prepare for, and that Gail Simone penned some of these adventures, means this won't be the last of Sonja's adventures I read in the near future.
* - Which Wolverine did, but he was a short, hairy gentleman about it.
** - Do they still call her that?
*** - Is there another gaze I'm supposed to activate?
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