A rough and tumble meeting.
Creative Staff:
Story: Jordie Bellaire
Art: Drew Moss
Colors: Rebecca Nalty
Letterer: Becca Carey
What They Say:
LET THE TEAM-UP BEGIN! In this issue: Vampirella takes a potion. Red Sonja gets hung upside-down by magic. A magical mystical mysterious gem begins to reveal its secrets. And many, many, SO many hamburgers are consumed. The ongoing sensation continues courtesy of JORDIE BELLAIRE (Buffy The Vampire Slayer) and DREW MOSS (Star Wars)!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The opening issue of this miniseries gave us a good focus on Vampirella as she landed in 1969 and we got to see how her life was there for a while before bringing in Red Sonja with the last page. Jordie Bellaire put together a solid issue with the story so that it was really accessible without leaning hard on decades of history, which was a huge plus. The same is largely true with Red Sonja’s focus here, which Drew Moss really gets to bring to life well with its visual design and the layouts that he gets to deal with thanks to it being a fairly verbose book. The team here is doing wonderful with everything as I love Nalty’s color design and Carey puts in some neat little twists to the dialogue once everyone is on the same page.
With so much focus on Vampirella the last time around, Bellaire doesn’t overcompensate with it all about Sonja. In fact, the first third or so of it is a bit rough on Sonja since she’s not speaking the language. Ella does her best to manage and subdue her to bring her to meet Charlie for some help, which goes rough at times before we finally get a language potion used to help everyone involved. It’s amusing watching the dynamic of the two because they’re both confident and capable with no real backing down to be had, but with different styles to how it’s presented. What we mostly come down to is discovering that Sonja has been put into this situation for reasons unknown using a generation stone that she’s bonded to for now which will throw her into some other time and place in the future again.
With that uncertainty there, Ella has kind of taken on a caretaker role and brought her back to her place, where Sonja gets pretty comfy as she adapts to the situation. The dynamic between the two is certainly amusing and there are fun moments to it that we’ve seen in other books that have paired them together. But the focus on the pictures that Ella has is what really draws Sonja out as she wants to investigate it as well, having seen them many times up in the mountain. That takes us to the military base and lab area eventually, all with Sonja being pretty cutthroat along the way, and it works well to showcase how well the two work together and the scale of what’s actually going on. It builds nicely on the first installment in that regard but it also lets the bulk of the book focus on our title characters.
In Summary:
I enjoyed the opening installment a lot with what Bellaire presented for the story, giving Ella the time she needed, and this one expands on that while also allowing for Sonja to get a good bit of time to show who she is. Drew Moss does a fantastic job with the book once again as it’s dynamic when it needs to be and has some great layouts to accommodate all the text in the busier areas while still making sure the story flows through the art itself. I’m definitely curious to see how things shift in the next installment with the reveal we got while also exploring more of Sonja handling this world. This series is firing on all cylinders right out of the gate.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: October 9th, 2019
MSRP: $3.99
