Pretty but chaotic.
Creative Staff:
Story: Christopher Hastings
Art: Pasquale Qualano, Vincenzo Carratu
Colors: Kike J. Diaz
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
What They Say:
THE MOST IMPORTANT SERIES OF 2021 EXPLODES FORTH!!!!!!!!!!!
The mystery of The Sonja Curse unfolds, as the RED Sonja must determine which Sonja is friend, which is foe, and which Sonja’s want to eat her body and/or soul! By CHRISTOPHER HASTINGS (Gwenpool) and PASQUALE QUALANO (DIE!NAMITE)!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The opening installment of Sonjaversal hinted at some good if familiar ideas about Sonja’s across time and space with a color design element to them but it wasn’t able to make it really cohesive. Hastings is in much the same boat in the second issue where it feels like it’s starting to firm up by the end but we still don’t really have a good central character to latch onto beyond Red Sonja herself. Pasqual Qualano returns with some fantastic artwork as he trie to make sense of all of this and he’s joined by Vincenzo Carratu this time. There’s a lot of action going on here and a variety of big moments to it all but it’s got the feeling of sound and fury without the meaning to it at this point for it to connect with the reader.
At its core, you can point to Red Sonja as the one to follow and that makes the most sense since she is the primary creation. Here, we see her mostly dealing with a warrior named Warrick that has taken a fancy to her after showing some skill himself and there’s some good back and forth in their fight until he does manage to actually best her and save her from drowning. It’s amusing watching them fight and the scenes that we get for it but it’s also disjointed with it in the past. The time in the present has Red Sonja fighting against the Orange Sonja and dealing with her quickly and efficiently enough, but it does provide a potential clue as Orange Sonja goes on about how she’s been unsure in her faith. That Red Sonja dispatches her and makes the claim that she’s not uncertain about her own – unrelated to what Orange Sonja was going on about – provides a hint to those watching over this that they may be wrong in their approach.
Whatever that approach is. I still don’t know what the real intent of the book is beyond initially bringing all these Sonja’s together to fight against each other and then what looks to be a way to get them to fight together against something larger. Bringing Sonja to a place that claims to be hell won’t be her first time going there but there’s a sense of something much larger coming into shape with the “dark” Sonja there that may finally make sense of some of this the next time around. But it’s unfortunate because so much of this issue doesn’t make much sense. There’s no grounding beyond Red Sonja and she’s not learning anything here. We’re stuck like her in just watching all this chaos flow around us, which while pretty, means nothing.
In Summary:
There’s a lot of great artwork here and the sections focusing on Red Sonja have a decent bit of cohesion to them so there’s definitely something to enjoy here. The material with the rest of the Sonja’s are hit or miss depending on what they’re doing, but there isn’t anything that really makes good sense from it all, unfortunately. I like the concept and idea that comes behind all of this but the execution of it is keeping almost everything at arm’s length instead of getting the reader to embrace it and have a way to see the storyline through. It’s all very superficial and at a distance instead.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: March 3rd, 2021
MSRP: $3.99
