An angel of death.
Creative Staff:
Story: Mark Russell
Art: Alessandro Miracolo, Vincenzo Federici
Colors: Dearbhla Kelly
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
What They Say:
Sonja The Red would do battle with a boy, who has lived a life in full.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Red Sonja storyline is getting ever closer to its finale with what Mark Russell has planned and the movements are exciting to watch unfold. With this issue, we finally get to bring her back into Cyril’s view after all that has gone down recently and it’s so tantalizingly close that you get all jittery about it. Russell can’t let it happen just yet, however, so there are some fun twists in the works because Cyril has learned over his imagined years. All of this lets Miracolo and Federici have a lot of fun with the visuals of this installment that largely focuses on bodies dropping over and over and over. The artwork doesn’t feel as consistent as it has in the last few issues and the run in general but it definitely sticks to the dynamic design and feeling that keeps it exciting to watch play out.
A lot of what Sonja is doing over the first few days of coming to Shazidar is getting a good lay of the land and working over the marketplace. There are night after night of guards taken down throughout it and a lot of them are fearful of taking marketplace duty because of the thing out there that’s killing all of them. Her plan is simple enough in that she wants to have the place overrun by guards so that she can use it as a distraction to attack elsewhere and she knows it’s almost that time when the banner of the Emperor flies over the city again, meaning that Cyril is back. Of course, Cyril may look young but we know the truth of the training he underwent and that there are years of experience there for him to see through her plans, especially when talking with the prophets whom he’s managed to teach how to talk more clearly with him.
Cyril’s plans are decent but you kind of wait to find out if there’s a couple of backup plans in the mix as well because his relying on his two giants feels like a weak plan, even as strong as they are. His threats with his guards is amusingly done as he poisons them all so that they’ll go on patrol and get the antidote only upon faithfully serving overnight. But this really does leave him to face Sonja directly and she’s simply just ready to go at it with her. These two have been circling each other for some time, knowingly and unknowingly, and it’s all built up to this sequence of events where he manages to have the upper hand and control over it. But at the same time, it feels tenuous simply because Sonja is still more unpredictable than he is and you’re left wondering what else it is she’s prepared for already.
In Summary:
When Mark Russell’s run is said and done I can see where he’s been able to tell a large and sprawling tale with a lot of neat things to it but also, in his own way, resets the property to zero. That’s not an easy thing to do but I suspect a big hardcover omnibus of just this run will be viewed as one of the best definitive versions of the character for some time to come. This issue sets up a lot of what will revolve around the final couple of issues of this storyline and I’m excited to see how it’s all going to play out, but knowing that this is a setup piece it also lacks that certain something that really makes it feel definitive.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment | Amazon | ComiXology
Release Date: September 2nd, 2020
MSRP: $3.99
