Homeopathic Sonja

Surelly, there must be a point when it is so diluted, that it is not Sonja anymore. If any woman with a metal bikini and a sword can be Sonja, is there any point for any character to continue to be called Sonja? What about a Nubian she-warrior from the bronze age? Will she be named Black Sonja? An Egyptian Queen from any of the Ptolemaic dynasties, will she be Sonja-Ra? And what will you call a vampire-hunting girl: Vampironja? Or maybe Sonjarella? When you wash away the distinctive personality and traits from a character, and leave only a name, you’re not creating a symbol, nor a myth. You are not saying that she is so recognizable that she is the embodiment of all strong, fighting women throughout time. Just as you need more than a loincloth and a sword to build a larger-than-life character like Conan, and won’t do with a blue leotard and a red cape to equal Superman, or any random twelve tasks to make a Hercules out of your characters, so Sonja cannot be reduced to a pair of metal encased tits and a phallic sword. Or should not. Dynamite keeps whoring Sonja, and id doing so she’s on a par with the times. Originality is no longer something to be cherished. Neither is continuity, as it smells too much of conservatism. The times are for institution-bashing and quality-smashing drible. Homeopathic drible, where you dilute so much what could work that it is not there anymore.

Blah blah blah

Mirka Andolfo in 2017

This past Wednesday the first issue of Dynamite’s ELVIRA MEETS VINCENT PRICE hit the stands. As is usual with Dynamite, tucked in the end of the book is a short promotional interview with creators that are handling current or upcoming properties for the publisher. In this case, the short interview is with Mirka Andolfo, concerning her upcoming run on RED SONJA:

Neither the interview nor the interviwee are much forthcoming about what to expect from this new series besides what was already known. Nor do them wet one’s appetite for the series; on the contrary, Andolfo doesn’t come out looking very knowlegeable about Sonja, deferring the arcane minutiae to her partner in writing Luca Blengino, by whom, I confess, I’ve never read anything.

A little more worrisome is Andolfo’s preoccupation in singling out Gail Simone’s take on Sonja. It needn’t be that worrisome if, as stated, Andolfo was doing her own version of the character. However, on reading this interview (I know it is a short one, and not really an interview but just glorified promo-copy) one gets the ideia Andolfo has not such a strong grasp neither on the character of Red Sonja, nor on what she intends to do with it. And if she seeks enlightenment from Simone’s utterly uninteresting run, it doesn’t bode well for the near future.

A wish that may be coming back to haunt me

Back in 2016, while reviewing the dismal SWORDS OF SORROW event, I expressed the wish that Italian artist Mirka Andolfo could one day secure at leat a six-issues run on RED SONJA: SHE-DEVIL WITH A SWORD after Simone had left the title. Or, at least, a couple of one-shots.

Well, that wish will be granted coming September when the first issue of Dynamite’s volume 6 of Sonja’s continuing run hits the stands. However, I must say I receive this news with mixed feelings. What had engraciated myself to Andolfo was her artwork on SWORDS OF SORROW: RED SONJA & JUNGLE GIRL, something that apparently will be confined to the book’s variant covers in this upcoming run, with the art duties falling upon Giuseppe Cafaro, an Italian artist whith whose work I’m not at all familiar (he’s done some work with Guilherme Balbi in SACRED SIX #4, and got credited as Guiseppe Cafro). And, although I’ve enjoyed reading MERCY and UN/SACRED, that is not the kind of writing I would expect for a Sonja book.

Moreover, it seems Dynamite invited Andolfo to create her own version of Red Sonja which, as good as it may yet prove to be, is one version too many, after the SONJAVERSAL overdose of regurgitated pseudo-Sonjas. What one would expect now was for Dynamite to settle on a version of Sonja – really, any one version – and start exploring all the nuances that made her what she is. And create stories that explore what what she is makes her do. Not to keep re-imagining a character that bares only the minimum of resemblance to Howard’s or Thomas’ creation. Adding insult to injury, I don’t in the least appreciate the new look of Sonja, as per Andolfo’s issue 1 cover (above). Although I do very much appreciate the old look on Andolfo’s virgin incentive variant cover (below).

Last, and maybe not leastly, the idea of exploring Sonja’s maternal side doesn’t bid anything good, and brings to mind Fleischer’s RED SONJA (1985). Although I feel it tackles what is perhaps the least interesting aspect of the Sonja character – maternity, or adopted maternity – I recognize that, if done well, one can derive from it a rich vein for new and complex stories. However Andolfo would have to be able to completely avoid comparisons with Kazuo Koike’s manga LONE WOLF AND CUB (1970-1976), that by now is an instantly recognizable classic of the genre. Which seems to be a rather tall order. But enough carping before the fact. I wished for it (more or less) and will now anxiously await to see what it delivers.

 

R.I.P FRANK THORNE (1930-2021)

Frank Thorne passed away this last March the 7th, a passing barely mentioned amidst the daily death tolls of the pandemic. It was a shock to find about it here, in this blog of ours, the sad notice glimpsed on the sidebar from another blog. I wanted to write something about him. Not quite an obituary, as I dread them more and more; nor an eulogy, something more personal than I felt entitled to; and definitely not an essay, as cold and pedantic as it would be unworthy of all the pleasure and enjoyment his ouevre has brought me all through the years. And so I kept it all to myself, the memories of my favourite stories, of those happy moments of my life when I was holding his books on my hands, immersed on those fabulous worlds that he was generous enough to share with us. Because, in the end, that’s all it ammounts to: not the speeches, the great hommages, the knowledgeable  essays, but the way one becomes part of the life and memories of another. And Thorne, mainly through his art on the Red Sonja stories, long before I found, and read, and loved LANN, and GHITTA, and THE IRON DEVIL, became part of me. Even before I knew his name was Frank Thorne, before I’d even glimpsed his glorious photographs dressed as the wizard Thenef with his buxom models. His art gave me pleasure. It became part of me. 

And so the world moves on, life moves on, slightly different because his art made it so. Different. Somehow, better. There’s no more you can ask for. 

So, I said it. It just felt wrong to return to this blog without thanking him for all the happy hours of reading and dreaming, and partaking of his wild wild world. Rest in peace, sage Wizard.

Finch's Cover Revealed

And almost with no time left to breathe in between posts, Dynamite has revealed the final version of this first official incursion of Finch into the Hyrkanian world. The title to be graced by this wonderful Sonja as slayer of Giants was also announced as being issue #1 of the upcoming RED SONJA: THE PRICE OF BLOOD, “an early chapter of the She-Devil's adventures, featuring a less refined and more bloodthirsty Hyrkanian heroine”. 

As fr the cover, it stands for itself in each of the four versions on offer. As does this regal, yet melancholy Sonja featured on it.

RED IN B&W: David Finch Cover

 

Meanwhile, I found out Finch has posted a bigger reveal of his Red Sonja upcoming cover in his own blog... almost two monthes ago (shame on me!). The picture looks just as good in simple B&W. Let's wait and see what D'Armata will add to it.

RED ON RED: David Finch Cover

In keeping up with the Indiegogo theme, Dynamite is announcing the launch of an upcoming campaign related to a new comic featuring our beloved Red. As is always the case with Dynamite’s self-congratulatory hype, this “new exclusive Red Sonja collectible comic ” will feature a “never before seen take on the She-Devil With a Sword”, but it is not forthcoming any details. More interesting, however, is the glimpse of the gorgeous cover by David Finch. This is a gloriously pretty Red Sonja, at the same time imperious and delicate, and I hope once it’s finalized with colors by Frank D’Armata, the cover won’t loose any of the raw impact it has in simple black ink over red. This is the first cover by Finch for Red Sonja. By the look of it, it was worth the wait.

Sexy Sonja Sunday

Red Sonja is one of the sexiest comic book characters of all time, even as she's fast approaching the half-century mark. As such, she is frequent fodder for artists and fans alike, from fan-art to porn fanfiction. "Arion" is one of the most talented digital artists whose work can be found on Deviant Art and other sites. This wonderful rendering of an intimate Sonja and Vampirella may very well sum up everything Sonja fans feel summarizes any of the Dynamite crappy crossovers currently featuring these two characters.

Now, with a new cross-over recently announced, MARS ATTACKS RED SONJA (how silly can you get, really?) - it all seems to fall into place: all these phantasmagorias of comic book worlds, all these insipid and uninspired money-milking plots, all these irredeemable incongruences, are mere editorial porn. Whoring Sonja over and over again.

The image above can also be construed as porn (if you're so inclined, you can check the x-rated versions on the author's Patreon), as are many of the puerile sex fantasies Sonja inspires in many of its readers, and, I'm sure, many would expect as the only single positive thing that could come out of such cross-overs as VAMPIRELLA/RED SONJA, or RED SONJA & VAMPIRELLA MEET BETTY & VERONICA, not to mention the dreadful SWORDS OF SORROW, that even as pure porn woul be boring. But I digress. Yes, even the image above can be construed as porn. But it is honest porn. Kudos for that.

Those were the days

I was perusing the Conan issues from MARVEL TREASURY EDITION when I came across this ad in the interior backcover for MTE #19 (1978). And it took me back a few wonderful years. Although I only started reading Marvel comic books in the early 80s through the Brasilian translations from Editora Abril (before that I'd read the DC Comics that were published by EBAL, also a Brasilian publisher), these were the exact three titles I was reading when I first discovered Sword & Sorcery, Conan and Sonja. At the time, Abril’s superhero comic books  were made up of collections of several stories that in American comics had been published in single issues. They were a little over the traditional digest size (being 19x13cm) and ran for 82 pages. They had titles like Superaventuras Marvel or Heróis da TV. Conan and Sonja were usually featured in the pages of the former, alongside Daredevil, Doctor Strange, the X-Men or Kull. As they didn’t print the entire series run for each character, but only selected stories, a typical issue would be extremely varied; take for instance issue #5 from Supervanturas Marvel (one of my favourites, cover dated November 1982, which means I would have read it about six months later – that was the time it took before they could be sold across the Atlantic): you would have the two stories from CONAN THE BARBARIAN #8 and #10 (1971), the Doctor Strange story from MARVEL PREMIERE #8 (1972), and the Daredevil story from DAREDEVIL #166 (1980).  The Portuguese language editions were coming out with over two years delay relative to the original American publication and sometimes, as was the case with SAM#5, with over ten years delay, which meant they had all this wonderful backlog of issues to choose from, something from which they took full advantage. Athough I guess some great stories went unpublished, I don’t recall many duds that were. Then, in 1984, Abril started publishing A Espada Selvagem de Conan (THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN) in all its glorious black-and-white grandeur (although with some extra inking to hide some undully exposed breasts, if I recall faithfully). Be as it may, those were the three titles I was reading at the time I was fourteen, in a hapilly serendipitous way in the mid-eighties. And so it was a nostalgic rush I got from this advert with the unmistakable art of John Buscema. Those were the days, all right.

Red Sonja: Birth of the She Devil: Lucio Parrillo

Keeping with the covers theme, and particularly with the covers for RED SONJA: BIRTH OF THE SHE-DEVIL (2019), here is the set by Lucio Parrillo that comprised the main covers for that title.

They’re strangely (and almost certainly involuntarily) complementary to the Parel variants. Where those covers were peacefull, almost restfull, with only traces of blood telling about violent combat, this set by Parrillo is full of violent action, battlelust, blood and gore. Parrillo’s Sonja is the full-bodied buxom warrior we all know and love, and his style perfectly evokes the classic Marvel covers by Joe Jusko and Boris Vallejo. By looking at them one never doubts that Sonja could fight an army on that metal bikini, and the sword cuts on her body fully attest to it. Parrillo also chose to emphasize the barbarian nature of Sonja (particularly in the cover for #4), what with all the skull necklace, heavy earrings and tribal face-paint.  It is a magnificent set, marred only by Sonja’s pin-up expression on the cover for #3.

Dynamite offered another set of variant covers by Sergio Dávila that, at least to me, look perfectly indifferent, and yet another (again, to my taste) perfectly irrelevant set of cosplay covers.

Red Sonja: Birth of the She Devil, SubaComic Exclusive (Gerald Parel)

Well, it surely must be old news by now, but SubaComic also offered variant covers for issues #2, #3, and #4 of last year’s mini-series RED SONJA: BIRTH OF THE SHE-DEVIL; however, for completism sake, here they are.

Just as it was the case with issue #1, these variants are by French artist Gerald Parel, whose covers are pretty well known by Marvel readers. His take on Red Sonja is quite interesting, presenting us a more elfin she-devil, not as well-endowed or muscular as one would expect, but lithe and elegant as a feline. The use of color and light is quite striking, particularly in issue #2. As a set, the four covers present a quite bucolic, almost pastoral, interpretation of Sonja, as if Parel is more interested in the inner-state of the warrior right before or after moments of violence, than in the fight itself, thus relegating violence to a necessity, rather than a taste, in Sonja’s life. Be as it may, these covers make for interesting comparison to the main covers for the series by Lucio Parrillo.

KILLING WHO, THAT IS NOT YET DEAD?

 

I should be the one to talk, dragging behind me a host of perpetualy moribund blogs, but…truth is, it pains me to see this blog of ours being quiescent for so long. So, taking advantage of the recent publication of issue one of KILLING RED SONJA (written by Mark Russell and Bryce Ingman, with pencils by Craig Rousseau), I felt tempted to share this very short rant that was inspired by my perusing of said title, as a way to try to bring myself to contribute a little more to this blog from now on. Though time for me has been in very short supply for this past few years, it pains me to leave so much of my pleasure projects unfinished. And the Red Sonja Chronological Retrospective is one of them, one I’ll try to come back to, soon. Anyhow, here we go:

KILLING RED SONJA was advertised, just like SWORDS OF SORROW (2016) before it, as being a series “that will affect the Sonja series for years to come!”, and, just like SWORDS OF SORROW before it, it probably will do no such thing. But this kind of recurring editorial hype made me think of the recent iterations of Red Sonja. Now, I have yet to read KILLING RED SONJA #1, as per the book’s own introduction we learn that “the events of this series take place directly after Red Sonja #12”, an issue (and a series – volume 5 of Dynamite’s run) that I also have not yet read (although I know Sonja is – again – Queen and apparently facing some demanding ethical choices). So, I intend to read the fourteen issues published until now before tackling this latest series; but one thing that struck me by merely browsing the book, was that Red Sonja appears only in its title. There’s nothing wrong with that – quite the contrary as, if well written, a story that revolves around Sonja, without she figuring in it but by influence – and a central motivational influence at that – can do much to illuminate and redefine the absent character. Redefine it in the reader’s mind, leading one to evaluate one’s personal connection and reaction to it.

But, alas, that, at least to me, is the main problem with the concept: who is Red Sonja? Who is she really, for today’s reader? During her period at Marvel in the seventies and up to the mid-eighties of last century, and despite its highs and lows, Sonja was a recognizable character, thanks in large part to Roy Thomas’s writing. However, since being delt a cleansing ideological washover by Gail Simone, one can’t seem to fix a single identitary mark on our beloved Hyrkanian. Worse than that, Red Sonja seems nowadays to be just a trademark to be prostituted to any prospective market (that is, as long as such market conforms its trade to a prefixed normative ideological trench – and, remember, art in service to ideology is mere propaganda). And the first victim to this was any semblance of chronological timeframe. Sonja is all over time and all over space; she goes from mercenary to queen, to drunkard, to truck driver in New York, vampire hunter in Riverdale, turist in Drakulon, again queen, again mercenary, a prospective mate for Tarzan in Africa, a fugitive on Mars, without any of her experiences ever reflecting on her character.

When Roy Thomas, by reader demand, casted Conan into the 20th Century in WHAT IF…? #13 (1978), the whole story was told through the eyes of an out-of-place, out-of-time barbarian, that saw all the modern contrivances (cars, buildings, even people) with his own time’s mindframe. A mantle of what we would think of as superstitious thought covered our reality when seen with Conan’s eyes. It was nothing new, utopian writers had been doing it since Antiquity, and modern writers at least since Tomas Morus, but it was done right. Conan wasn’t even capable of comunication, as his language was long dead and he knew no English, and the idea of setting the climax at the inverted zigurath shape of the Guggenheim was true storytelling gold.

Being a kind of alternate tale, Thomas didn’t have to deal with how Conan woud have coped once back to his own Hyborean Age. But he didn’t need to. His story was so soundly logic, its treatment so right, that we readers could intelectually antecipate how Conan would frame that experience along those he had had before dealing with wizardry and magic. He wouldn’t have to mentally cope with concepts like future societies, democracy, technological advance, ecology, etc…

That is not an escape Sonja’s recent scribes can count on. Sonja always appears immersed on alien societies (sometimes literallly alien): she shares the language, she shares the uses, she shares the mores; she’s as adroit riding a horse as a Harley and, one would think, as adroit fighting street-gangs as doing cheerleading routines. She goes to outer space without ever grasping the meaning and import of that apparently simple feat, so familiar to SF readers before 1961 and Gagarin, but so epic and glorious for all others. And, an even worse offense, she has no trouble integrating her worldview into modern times or alien places. Above all, she seems untouched by any of her experiences. When she finds herself back on her own time, all of that has disappeared from her personal experience. As if her mind has been swiped clean with a magical sponge, the reverts back to an ersatz barbarian immediately after she has returned from a long stint on New York, Riverdale, or whatever Fantasyland or Planet she happens to have been transported to.

Nothing seems to have touched her. She learned nothing. She doesn’t even think of adding something to her world, to her time. Sonja seems to be imutable, and that is a sad thing in any character, but a fatal flaw when said character is no more than an empty shell from the start. Gone is the determined, fierce, scathing Sonja of Thomas and Thorne. What remains is a fanfiction creation, with such a lack of character density that she fits any and every story one cares to think up. Hey, one can imagine someone say in creative meetings on Dynamite’s offices, what if somehow Sonja was transported to Tatoine by some evil wizard – why not Kulan Gath, we haven’t seen him for...what?, two, three issues?.. – and she ends up on the Death Star fighting with her sword against Vader’s lightsaber? Or better yet…with her own lightsaber? And what about she and Leia ending up on the clutches of Jabba? Wow, man, great idea. Is Amy Chu around? And, if Disney is okay with that, it will be done, without caring for the nature of Red Sonja herself, or the demands of her character.

Ironically, in devoiding Sonja of a full personality (distinct from that of her successive writers), one subject only to the concerns of the story, and reducing her to a maleable form, capable of adapting into any kind of narrative story, it becomes impossible to write a story that will “affect the Sonja series for year to come”. For Sonja has nothing that can be affected. She is just a shape, just a form. She is now paradoxically reduced to what she was always derided for apparently being: a pair of tits in a metal bikini.

Whoring Sonja

Just the other day I was browsing one of my favourite comics blogs, Pete Doree's The Bronze Age of Blogs, when I came across this Brian Bolland 1978 advert for Derek and Diane Stokes's  Dark They Were, And Golden Eyed, published in STARBURST #1.

DTWAGE was an iconic science fiction and comic book shop in London, which counted among its most distinguished costumers Nick Laundau, Alan Moore and a host of other soon-to-be famous writers and artists before it closed its doors in 1981. Not having ever been to London prior to that time, but having always been a fan of horror, science fiction, comics and, yes, even Fortean literature (and its sixties derivates from Erich Von Daniken and Robert Charroux, to Jacques Vallée and J.J. Benítez), the famous and sadly missed bookstore was an ever present reference in my imaginarium.

In 1978 Red Sonja was at the peak of her popularity thanks to Frank Thorne's run on her book at Marvel, and she clearly dominates the advert in question, relegating even Batman, Mr. Spock and Robbie the Robot into the background. As I had never seen this advert before, it was something of a surprise to see the high esteem in which such a revered artist as Brian Bolland held our lovely Sonja, or, at least, the popularity she seemed to have on the other side of the Atlantic pond. And that she's here associated with one of the most important and beloved fantasy bookstores in the world, advertising it (without the copyright holders's knowledge, I'm sure) just made me ponder how Dynamite has been legally whoring Sonja in a way that not even an unauthorized advert could.   

45 and counting: Happy Birthday, Red!

Red Sonja has turned 45 this last February, a date that went sadly unnoticed in this our blog for all things Sonja. I guess partly the reason for this neglect has been Red Sonja’s recent run on Dynamite Comics, mainly after Gail Simone’s tenure on the title. Not only that, but her recent adventures have sent the she-devil with a sword carousing all over time and space, diluting the essence of the character until the final holistic distillation has little of the Hyrkanian warrior left. Truth is, she is not Red Sonja anymore. Surely not our Red Sonja.

When Sonja was presented to the readers in that historical issue of CONAN THE BARBARIAN #23, cover-dated February 1973, the world was watching with a mixture of enthusiasm, bemusement and contempt the rise of the furious second wave of feminism. Against that cultural background, Red Sonja, a fierce woman warrior, inferior to no man, was a welcome novelty for both female and male readers, the latter comprising the traditional comic-book readership. More than a novelty, the fierce mercenary captain and cunning spy/thief from “The Shadow of the Vulture” and “The Song of Red Sonja” was the pure embodiment of the new woman brought about by celebrities like Jane Fonda (able to embody the roles of  both political activist as Hanoi Jane and sexy space kitten as Barbarella). Red Sonja thus became the comics feminist icon par excellence.

When Spanish artist extraordinaire Esteban Maroto depicted Red Sonja in a metal-bikini some months later, it caught the fancy of millions of readers and gained the attention of none other than Red Sonja’s creator himself, Roy Thomas, who didn’t feel too enthusiastic about the chain-mail shirt and hot-pants with which Barry Windsor-Smith (another genius artist) had garbed Sonja. Penned by Thomas, “Red Sonja” appeared in the pages of THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN #1 in 1974. The art was by Esteban Maroto, Neal Adams and Ernie Chua (a sacred pantheon of comics artists) and in it Sonja wore her metal bikini for the first time in a story (or two, as she also starred in the main feature of the book, the Conan adventure “Curse of the Undead-Man”, where both Hyborian Age giants were reunited for the first time since “Song of Red Sonja” the year before).

“Red Sonja” was destined to become a classic in Red Sonja’s canon of early stories; when it saw print Sonja was yet to be granted the mandatory comic-book-character origin story, however one throwaway line in it would prove crucial for her future development: ‘Red Sonja made a vow that no man ever shall touch her, save one who’s defeated her in battle’. Thomas was trying to add a little more resonance to a growingly fonder character when he borrowed the quote from Yeats’s “On Baile’s Strand” (1903) and Queen Aoife defeat at the hands of Celtic hero Cuchulain there depicted, but in doing so he invested her with the first inkling of true mythical resonance. A power that would spring full-fledged a year later (in KULL AND THE BARBARIANS #3, September 1975) in her long awaited origin story that set as the reason for such a vow the massacre of Sonja’s family and her vicious (gang)rape at the hands of the perpetrators. The tragic and mythical potential of such a traumatic genesis went widely unnoticed by rabid feminists that simply saw in it the setting of Sonja as a walking add for rape. By the time third-wave feminism got to corrupt modern thought with the tenets of political correction, Sonja was a major no-no: after all, one should come out of such a life-changing event turned into a zombified eternal victim, not as a powerful warrior.

This post is neither the place to set them straight or to expand on a theme of such complexity and polemic value, and if I mention it at all is because it seems to be de rigueur, and because such an incredibly obtuse gut-reaction goes a long way in explaining the recent ill-fate of the character. However, one must recognize that, if treated wrongly, Red Sonja could easily turn into a mere porn-fantasy romp. But then came along Frank Thorne… Wait a minute? What? Yes, I know what you’re thinking: but didn’t Frank Thorne turn Sonja precisely into a “male-ego-oriented cartoon sex cipher”, and her adventures into “tit-slinging, butt-posing soft porn” in the words of Windsor-Smith himself? Well, Thorne’s Sonja may be seen as an abrupt change from Windsor-Smith’s more restrainedly sexy warrior, but to see his work as mere soft porn is myopic. Thorne is a sensualist by nature, someone whith a keen knack and sensibility for the subterranean eroticism of the id as a major creative source throughout the centuries. One can indeed think of Sonja as a feminist icon, but one would be better served reading her as a timeless erotic icon. And that’s exactly what Thorne set out to do, and to do it excellently. In Thorne’s most lavish pages, the world turns into a moist organic growth of living swamps and swollen lumps of clotted earth. Demons, men and animals are bloated carcasses ready to burst in riotous explosions of fetid bodily fluids. It’s a sensory and sensual universe from which metal-bikini-clad Sonja appears to emerge as a shining jewel from a mildewed and rotting purse or, better yet, from the wet shining entrails of a slain impish devil. One can’t fully recall all the times that Thorne’s Sonja had to crawl through swamp bilge, ride under unrelenting rain, fight in cesspools or even inside the rotting carcass of gigantic beasts.  One can’t help but to associate all of that disgusting fleshy fluidness with Sonja’s barely concealed body, building in one’s mind a permanent subtext of aliveness, of organic matter trying to overflow, to reproduce in a torrent of uncontrolled, subliminal eroticism. Of course, Thorne would take the erotic aspect of Sonja’s character even further in his ersatz-Sonja Ghita of Alizarr, where he could tackle the more obviously uncomfortable implications of Sonja’s legend that Marvel wouldn’t allow in its hallowed pages.

Thorne would become forever associated to Red Sonja, his run on Marvel Comics usually held as the fan-favorite summit of perfection. I am one of those. Thorne’s tenure on Marvel’s Red Sonja ended in 1979 and although the character would have a vivid career throughout the ninety-eighties, including a polemic change of costume that substituted a new blue fur-gown more in tune with the conservative eighties for the metal bikini, but never again reached the visceral mythic levels of Thorne’s run.

Alas, Red Sonja would subtly flicker away from center stage during the nineties, and when she returned in the new millennium, under a different imprint, it was to suffer a major conceptual overhaul and a significant downgrade in quality, mostly after she was substituted, body-snatchers-like, by ersatz Horny Sandra (again, a tip of the hat to our colleague TheMightyFlip for this fortunate moniker) after a somewhat decent run before Gail Simone threw her into the pudgy little priggish and small-minded fingers of her merry band of quota girls who promptly set to depower, diminish and demythologize her. Anyway, adding insult to injury (or vice-versa, as it seems more appropriate to the case in point), Red Sonja was killed in issue 34 of Dynamite’s run, her looks and name usurped by some aristocratic floozy relative whose mere existence betrays everything established in Sonja’s canon until then. Not a happy ending, no siree. However, that must not distract us from what really matters: Red Sonja – the real Red Sonja – has just completed her 45th anniversary, and that's surely a reason to rejoice. In the current PC-infected cultural milieu Marvel probably wouldn’t treat Red Sonja any better than Dynamite has done. Let us then celebrate this greatest of comic characters, the unsurpassed sword queen of the Hyborian Age, every teenager’s wet dream, every feminist’s nightmare, the one and only Red Sonja of Hirkanya. Here’s looking at you, Red. Happy Birthday!