Sonja’s plans to drink and make merry begin to mix intrigue into it.
Creative Staff:
Story: Luke Lieberman
Art: Drew Moss
Colors: Dearbhla Kelly
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
What They Say:
Ten years have passed. Sonja is uninterested in battle…she’d rather eat meat and drink ale. But The Red’s hand will be forced, and she will answer the call to battle.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As I said with the previous issue, I’m not going into Luke Lieberman’s run on Red Sonja in an adversarial way. The previous storyline over the last couple of years was fantastic and while I would have preferred a new first issue launch, I understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. Lieberman’s script and story concept is coming together better for me with this issue and I’m mo on board there now, which definitely helps. It also doesn’t hurt in the slightest that Drew Moss really delivers some great stuff here. I love the way Sonja comes across but then you get someone like Kentaro that’s almost from another book and yet it works. The physical comedy as illustrated, such as with the tiger, is a delight as well to watch unfold.
With Sonja launching into the arena to save Kentaro at Tristine’s requests, this provides for the first of two very fun arena sequences in this installment. But it’s far more engaging after the fact when Sonja gets to deal with the Sultan himself who sees her as a way to really make some money by keeping her in the arena as long as possible. Sonja, of course, is not going to have any of that but she’s also going to play him for all he’s worth at first because she has far bigger goals here. With him having a huge number of slaves and them building his little kingdom here, she’s intent on finding the right way to get them out. And that even means using Tristine to get him to negotiate working with Hyrkannia by freeing them to their country to help build it up, which in turn they’d work with him to make sure he’d profit as well.
There’s a lot to like in how this issue unfolds, particularly as Sonja has likely figured out why Isolde sent these two to her beyond the immediate piece of reconnecting. Both Tristine and Kentaro are solid enough people but they lack the real-world experience in order to really hold their positions should Isolde pass. As Tristine notes, she was a little girl when Sonja dealt with the Zamorans and changed her own people in a big way. The dialogue between Sonja and the two, separately and together, is really a delight to watch unfold as well as how she pushes them in new ways, such as Tristine negotiating with the Sultan and Kentaro joining her in the arena, listening to her advice. They’re both still far from being competent in the most basic ways of survival in the real world but what unfolds here is a delight.
In Summary:
While I had no doubt Luke Lieberman would deliver a solid story for Red Sonja, I was just wary about it following so quickly after what I consider to be the definitive Red Sonja series. His building on that, smartly moving forward ten years, shifts in direction in the right ways, and what we get in this installment helps to reinforce that he’s making the right choices in the script. Drew Moss has been a favorite of mine for some time, especially on Dynamite titles, and his work here is just perfection for the story. I love the expressions that Sonja has as well as some of the supporting cast. There’s a lot of detail but there’s also an expansive cleanliness to it all that with the color design makes this a really great looking book.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment | Amazon | ComiXology
Release Date: April 21st, 2021
MSRP: $3.99
