Let me tell you of the days of medium adventure.
What They Say:
The She-Devil with a Sword… captured and infected by the bite of a loathsome creature of the night! Offered as a human sacrifice to the vampire’s dark god, Red Sonja must defeat both monster and its master… or be transformed into a bloodthirsty predator herself!
Creators:
Writer: Scott Beatty
Penciler: Edu Mena
Colorist: Sara Machajewski
Letterer: Marshall Dillon
Cover Artist: Jose Malaga
Editor: Joseph Rynbadt
The Review:
On a bright night lit by a full moon, Red Sonja—She-Devil with a Sword, bathes in a seemingly deserted pool, washing off blood and road dust. She is taken by surprise by Lykaanus, a worshiper of the beast god Jhebbal Sag. Lykaanus wishes to offer her up to his God in hopes that this sacrifice will entice Sag to lift his curse from the sorcerer. Sonja escapes and fends off both sorcerer and God, but is bitten in the process, acquiring Lykaanus’ curse. Now she has twenty-eight days to free herself of the curse, or become a wolf in woman’s clothing, aging seven years every full moon.
It’s hard to screw up a sword and sorcery story. At heart they are very simple, and that simplicity is one of the reasons why they are so appealing. Red Sonja is very loosely based on a Robert E. Howard character, but owes much of her existence to comic creators Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith. Famed for her red hair and her superior fighting skills, she—like Howard’s other creation, Conan—travels the lands of Hyboria searching for adventure, fortune, and her destiny. Her beauty and her chainmail bikini account for a great deal of her popularity, and it’s very easy to write her off as cheesecake. However, when written well, she can be a nuanced, compelling character, and her power comes from her actualization of her own power, which is an even greater accomplishment given the profoundly misogynistic and phallocentric setting in which she exists.
That being said, most of this issue is cheesecake. It’s enjoyable cheesecake, but it lacks the raw fire that Howard and other writers bring to these stories that elevate them past their simple plots. We first see Sonja as she is bathing in a waterfall with mist conveniently covering her chest and hips. Lykaanus sneaks up on her and hits her over the head with a rock. She awakes tied to stakes planted in the ground and covered in a fur—the clear implication being that she is naked underneath. Later when the fur is taken away it’s revealed that Lykaanus had drawn magic runes on her body and taken the liberty of dressing her in a leather bra and panties. It’s unclear why he has done this. He makes it obvious that he intends for Jhebbal Sag to either eat Sonja or take her for his bride (bringing to mind the notion of rape and bestiality, even if it is a God), so there would be no point in covering Sonja, even in such a minimal manner. It’s obviously done to keep the comic from getting a mature rating, but it denotes a thoughtlessness on the part of the writer and artist that takes away from the story.
The story takes a turn for the better when Sonja frees herself. The parts where she eludes Jhebbal Sag were exciting and illustrated her strength and cunning, and the conclusion is cold-blooded and mercenary enough to truly establish why she is considered the She-Devil with a Sword, but the setup takes away from the rest. It is cliché, for one thing, and it brings to mind some rather unsavory conotations that have no business in a story like this. Furthermore, it doesn’t commit. It plays up the level of cheesecake already inherent in the character to a point where it could not pay it off, and instead cops out with a leather bikini.
In Summary:
I have affection for Red Sonja because I am a huge fan of Robert E. Howard and the work that Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith did back in the Eighties. I also have to admit that I like her appearance. She’s a beautiful, red-headed, ass-kicking woman in a chainmail bikini. What’s not to like? However, the novelty of her appearance alone is not enough to carry a story, and the imbalanced way that this issue handles the cheesecake factor makes It a very lopsided read. One of my favorite comic writers, Gail Simone, is taking over the title soon, which is one of the reasons why I decided to start reading it again, and I look forward to seeing her take on the character, but this outing just doesn’t make the grade. Not recommended.
Grade: C-
