The scale increases along with the body count.
Creative Staff:
Story: Christopher Hastings
Art: Pasquale Qualano
Colors: Kike J. Diaz
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
What They Say:
The mind-bending adventures of a host of Sonja’s continue in Dynamite’s most ambitious Red Sonja tale yet! TEAM SONJA flies toward the space-based temple, home of the gods of the universe! The thing about gods, though…they’re not always on your side. By CHRISTOPHER HASTINGS (Deadpool) and PASQUALE QUALANO (DIE!namite).
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Sonjaversal series continues to frustrate in a lot of ways, especially since I keep seeing so much potential for it. Hastings has a good concept here that was marred by a really rough start and then giving us a confusing series of events. Further issues, like this one, expands on things in a way that helps but it also just lacks a cohesive feeling that makes you really want to stick with it when it gets too verbose. What helps is that Pasquale Qualano has some great designs for pretty much all of the Sonja’s we get as well as the locations. The fight sequence are great, the color design works just right, and there’s a strong cohesive look to it visually.
My main problem is that we do have a couple of different groups of Sonja’s running around and I haven’t quite named them all yet easily, so they kind of become blobby in a sense. Our primary in Red Sonja has a group she’s hooked up with and they’re getting sent to the nearby moon where the gods sleep in death and they intend to find out more of what’s going on there and use that to bring all of this to an end and get back to their respective worlds. At the same time, we get those that just want to eliminate more of the Sonja’s out there and revel in the bloodshed. It’s got a few things running here and we get some decent action early on and a sense of where things stand for a bit.
We also start to get some flashback stories for the group that Red Sonja is with as she talks about how she gained her ability to fight and withstand things and the price she has to pay through the conquering of others. We see how she and the guy she’s been with are handling things as he’s gotten older over time and she’s intending to retire in order to spend her life with him without the caveat. There are a good number of pages given over to a couple of the other Sonja’s with her but it becomes a too much kind of thing with several new histories in short of characters I’m struggling to adjective-name in order to really get to know. Something about this book just keeps me at a slight enough distance so that it doesn’t connect right.
In Summary:
Sonjaversal is such a neat idea that I’ve said each time that still just doesn’t click right for me. I like the variety and you can see some of the larger concept that’s at work here and I love Qualano’s artwork and designs. There’s just something so fun about Sonja across the timelines and trying something very different yet similar. But the story execution stumbled at the start and I still feel like I’m trying to catch up. And when I do, such as the trip to the moon/ruined world here, it then shifts gears and spends all the time on background and other story material that ends up making me feel lost again. The artwork is what’s making this work for me but it’s by a thread.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: May 19th, 2021
MSRP: $3.99
