A strong and engaging finale.
Creative Staff:
Story: Jimmy Palmiotti, Amanda Conner
Art: Moritat
Colors: Sal Monaco
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
What They Say:
Sonja, Zaria, and Edward make the final run for the coast to return the Princess back to her homeland, but can they escape an army of killers, a stampede of monsters, and a bounty hunter bent on delivering Sonja’s head for a promise of wealth?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With a lot of years of reading works by Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner, we hit the penultimate installment of this storyline – still listed as a first storyline, thankfully – and it’s playing to almost an epilogue kind of feel but with a bit more to it than that since there’s one more fight to go. The evolution of the story has taken us to all kinds of places but we’ve built up such an interesting group of characters across it that it’s thoroughly engaging. It’s all laid out in a way that allows Moritat to shine even more than usual. His talent is not wasted here as we move across the lands, deal with some great characters, and put Sonja in positions where expressiveness is key. The end result is a really richly detailed book that has a ton going for it in making these places and characters engaging and alive in so many ways.
Similar to a few other series recently, the finale is one that moves through things quickly and doesn’t overstay its welcome but feels like it should have been two issues in order to space it out more. We get some nice stuff to start it off showing Zaria at the start of her trip with her family in order to provide the harder moment of her father, hung and dead, and most of the city’s residents killed as well. That horror has shifted Zaria significantly and Ederick is right there to support her, but she smartly leans into Sonja to deal with this. Sonja knows what kind of situations are created by this and discovers another warrior in the city named Neenia who lost her husband and children to all of this carnage while on the outskirts of the kingdom. That reveals that Blackwing was behind it and it puts Sonja on a familiar path.
Sonja’s dealings with Blackwing are a lot of fun as she sets Zaria to try and rescue the Queen and that lets that story play out as it should and with some good emotion. For Sonja, it’s just a matter of being her true self in challenging Blackwing and then all challengers from there until she cements her leadership, which she won’t retain because that’s not her thing. The book provides a good epilogue on how the Queen will rule going forward, Zaria’s delayed wedding, and some of the dynamics that exist between Sonja and Zaria and just a confirmation once again of how Sonja intends to live her life. It’s all neat and tidy and you expect that from something like this where it’s designed to tell a complete story and it does work really well to deliver that and make it feel like things were accomplished in the end.
In Summary:
This run, coming out alongside another Red Sonja series, had a lot of similarities in a broad sense and kind of ended in the same way, which is a little frustrating when you’ve basically read both endings within a week or two of each other as it stands out more. That said, each run is incredibly distinct in how they operate and sound and showcases the way Sonja can operate under very different voices managing the stories. I really enjoyed this one as Palmiotti and Connor have this kind of material nailed down well and just feels like they had a blast with it. And Moritat is an incredible artist in general and what they did here in giving us a view of Sonja’s world through their eyes made for a really engaging and fun journey. It’s a great run that hopefully finds a very long life in collected form as well for people to discover.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: September 7th, 2022
MSRP: $3.99
