“Mother, Chapter 2”
Creative Staff:
Story: Mirka Andolfo, Luca Blengino
Art: Giuseppe Cafaro
Colors: Chiara di Francia
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
What They Say:
Sonja struggles to recover from injuries, relying on SITHA to help her. Their bond grows, as they travel from city to hamlet, and as Sonja discovers more about Sitha’s past, the more dangerous their path becomes…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Mirka Andolfo was someone I knew as an artist first and foremost for the longest time but after dabbling in a few of their written works, I’ve been all on board to see how she’d handle this series. The opening issue was a solid one in giving us a big picture story but something small and personal, as she writes alongside Luca Blengino as the two put together a familiar story but one that’s really well-executed and makes for an engaging read. Giuseppe Cafaro is handling the artwork with Chiara di Francia doing the color design and it’s really great. There’s a really great sense of color to this that gives it an almost film-like feeling at times with its clarity and definition that ends up bringing to life all the details from Cafaro’s artwork all the more. It’s richly detailed and immerses you in this engaging world in a really great way. I love the look of the cast and the expressiveness that we get as well.
With Sitha doing her best to protect Sonja, we see at the start that dark things haunt the woods and she can do only so much. Thankfully, the reality is that there are still some decent people out there in the world as we’re introduced to Samosh when Sonja eventually awakens in a bed. Though she’s belligerent and aggressive from the start, which is hard to pull off when she’s so weak and ill, she’s intent on finding Sitha and what happened here. As it turns out, she’s been passed out for the last ten days while Samosh has been taking care of her and as Sitha does a ton of work around his pace in order to pay him back. The larger warrior-type Samosh has that gentle giant thing about him that works well as he tries to get Sonja to just relax and realize that while the world is populated by bad dudes, he’s not one of them.
This does take up a good chunk of the book and it works well, even if Sonja still has disbelief over how good a guy Samosh is. That said, the journey to bring Sitha back gets underway and delivering her to the guy that will bring her home goes off fairly well. At least from Sonja’s part as Sitha is just raging over this and Sonja is hiding that she’s managed to bond with this kid a bit. It’s a hard moment that she goes through with but has the change of heart later, as you knew she would at some point. Of course, everything is going south in other ways and this lets Sonja shine with her anger and intensity, but it has its own twists along the way that makes the net issue a must-read one.
In Summary:
Red Sonja progresses well here and I’m already curious to see how Samosh will factor into things going forward as you know he’ll be back for another appearance. Sonja’s distrust and gruff approach when she wakes up is a real treat to watch play out as is the way we see how Sitha handles things while Sonja was out of it. The later material involving Zorndyck and Sitha being turned over feels a little more convoluted than it should be but it sets up for Sonja to give chase once more in going after Sitha and that’s always a fun thing to watch play out. The book reads well and has great artwork, making for a really enjoyable read.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: October 6th, 2021
MSRP: $3.99
