I couldn't resist picking up a copy of Gail Simone’s first issue of Red Sonja. I confess, though, that I have no basis for comparison: I can’t tell you whether this effort is any better or worse — or even different — from the Red Sonjas that have gone before because I haven’t read any of them since Frank Thorne retired from the books years ago. From the beginning of the Sonja revival at Dynamite, it was obvious that most of the creative energy was poured into the character’s figure, and the birthday suit Sonja wore in lieu of a costume. A nearly naked female sword-fighter. I like pictures of barenekkidwimmin as well as the next guy, but I’m also looking for a noticeable skill in the rendering, and the guys drawing this Sonja didn’t turn me on (so to speak). Covers, nice; but interiors? Too obviously going for as much skin as possible.
But the interviews that Simone gave when she took on the writer role with this incarnation of the Robert E. Howard character intrigued me—first, because Simone apparently loves the character! A woman writer who loves a skimpily clad female sword and sorcery character? A stunning affront to male chauvinist so-called throught processes. Second, because Simone vowed to treat Sonja differently—a little more sex and sense of humor. But still a woman who is her own master. And she pretty much pulls it off.
In the opening sequence, we follow the conquerors of Zamora as they enter the dungeons and find only two survivors, both apparently women, hanging in chains from the wall. They are in such poor shape that the victorious general’s aide recommends killing them both as an act of mercy, but the general says, No. Instead, “Give them each a horse and free passage.” At that point, one of the chained creatures murmurs that her name is Red Sonja.
The story then shifts abruptly “three turns of the seasons” into the future, when Sonja is summoned to the king, Dimath, the first king Sonja ever met who showed mercy to anyone. She owes him her sense of dignity, she says, and so answers his summons.
He enlists her to help save his people, who’ve been struck down by a plague, from the pillaging of a new band of Zamorans, led by a “terrifying general.” Sonja agrees to help and instructs farmers and craftsmen in the arts of soldiering. When the Zamoran horde approaches, she mounts a horse and leads Dimath’s peasants into battle—finding, immediately, that the fearsome general is Dark Annisia, the other woman who’d been chained with her in that dungeon three turns of the seasons ago.
The artist for this issue appears to be Walter Geovani (he’s credited as “writer” as well as Simone, but no artist is listed, so Geovani’s credit is clearly a typo). And he does all right. Every picture of Sonja is not a pin-up or an erotic opisthotonos. And her bosom is more the size and shape of a normal woman’s. Moreover, Geovani can also draw men and horses and the equipage of war. He shadows portions of every figure drawing in ways that I find excessive, but he’s at least skillful at it. I fault only his women’s faces: he, like many of his colleagues these days, pinches female facial features, giving them tiny mouths and eyes. A little too effete for my taste, but this, indeed, may be entirely a matter of taste.
The best picture of the issue, however, is on the cover, one of four variants—this one by Amanda Conner.
Alas, the normally endowed Sonja had only a brief life. By the third issue of the title, the red-headed swordswoman’s anatomy is no longer suffering from the visual restraint we have seen on the interior pages in the two preceding issues. Embonpoint blooms.
