Joe Jusko does a Sonja #50 cover!

I don't usually pay much attention to the free issues of Comic Shop News at my local comic shop, but it quickly grabbed my attention this week when I spotted Joe Linsner's rendition of Sonja on the cover. The issue features an article all about the upcoming landmark (for current indy titles, anyway) 50th issue of Red Sonja. I figure the series is way past 50 already if you count all the other Sonja titles out there like Savage Tales, the Spider-man/Red Sonja crossover, Queen Sonja, the Red Sonja/Claw crossover, Red Sonja Vs Thulsa Doom, etc. By my count, there are already about 90 Dynamite-published Sonja issues.






So, back to the article.

The Comic Shop news article talks about contributors to the upcoming issue (there are quite a few new faces) and some of the basic plot outlines for the stories. There are four covers for the issue and I will be picking up each of them. They're all beautiful.

Even our good friend Joe Jusko is doing one of them. And it's amazing.

One of the stories is such a Conan rip-off that it's comical. It's basically Sonja vs the Frost Giants. Wow. If I was a Howard purist, I'd be pissed. But as a Howard fan who doesn't mind seeing other characters visit Howard's universe, I'm psyched.

The Comic Book Resource web site also has an article talking about the upcoming issue. And its images from the issue are much better quality than the news print scans I did from the Comic Shop News.










I can't wait.


Here's an advertisement showing the Turner statue and the art book with the Silvestri cover that's mentioned in the Comic Shop News article.

That Joe Jusko again....

A convention drawing.  Some lucky art afficianado is gonna own this soon.  Too bad it will not be me.

I'm beginning to wonder if the film will ever be released

I was picking up my weekly fix of comics (no new Sonja or Conan books this week) at the local comic shop yesterday and heard some surprising Red Sonja news from one of my fellow comic-nerds: Rose McGowan is apparently out of Red Sonja.

I really don't think McGowan's recasting is a huge loss. Rose is attractive and probably would have played an okay Sonja (certainly better than the manly Brigitte), but is just a little too scrawny for Sonja. But - after my fellow nerd made us unsuccessfully guess who her replacement was for about five minutes - the actress reported to have been offered the role is just wrong. All wrong.

Megan Fox.



Seriously? Sure, she's got the Sonja curves, but even with the best wig or dye job, she's just doesn't visually look like a Red Sonja to me (although the visual comparison above makes a good case). And don't get me started on the one-dimensional, apathetic flatness of her "acting."

Haven't the fans of Red Sonja suffered enough?

RED SONJA by Joe Jusko

My apologies Shon but I saw Joes drawing and could not wait to share with my blogger buddies

And Then There Was That Time

That Red Sonja tickled M.O.D.O.K.

Drawn by Ernie Chan. Yes, Ernie Chan.

The Sonja-Thor tag team

So Queen Sonja #2 finally came out last week (or the week before, I forget) and I only just got around to reading it (and the last couple of issues of Conan). Great stuff.

The cover is another Luccio Parrillo masterpiece (though I'm not entirely sure what it has to do with the story).


The story is progressing...interestingly. I'm not sure how Norse gods ended up in Robert E Howard's universe, but who couldn't love a throwdown with Thor, Loki and Sonja? Although I've never seen Thor's hair in quite that color.


The Loki of this story seems a little too...manly, too. I've always seen him represented and imagined him as more of a scrawny malcontent, not a powerful scheming dissident. But it works for the story.

This version of Loki certainly has no problem with the ladies. Look at the top frame, especially the girl in the foreground on the right side - that's a page right out of the Peter M Hsu playbook (Elf Warrior, Quadrant, Gauntlet).

A smattering of RED !

When I was just an itty bitty boy my brother gave me a stack of comic books. The usual stuff was there Capes , cowls , webs and shields but one comic book stood out like a sore thumb. It was CONAN the barbarian # 24 introducing RED SONJA. I was captivated immediately...Sonja in the fountain CONAN cupping her chin about to move in and steal a kiss. The entire sequence left a lot to the imagination. From that moment on I knew that these types of comic books and others like them would be my reader's choice. Warriors and Warrior women. It took me to another time and place a different world. One like other 10 year old boys did not even know about. While they were all flipping baseball card I was having adventures. In my mind in my reading in my loose leaf comic books and yes even with a nice hefty branch to sub as a sword in the woods behind my house.
That one comic book opened up my mind and expanded my horizon's. I read I drew I went to art school to be a comic book artist ( I failed ) but at the end of the day I take comfort in knowing that all that reading about adverturer's and moral's and chivalry and value's just served to make me and other people just like me smarter and more understanding than most people.
I make no claims but I know we as fans....we just seem to care about things a little more than most. For me it was because of RED SONJA and CONAN.

Sorry I have been neglecting...

I have been paying a lot of attention to Adventures in Nerdliness lately (some good posts on they way). Here is a bit of art by Art Adams which I found on Tumblr:

Yep, Sonja's still the Queen...

The fourth issue of Queen Sonja came out a couple of weeks ago and I figured I would have been beaten to the punch long before now, but Mikey must be asleep at the wheel. So here's my impression of this series that seems a little too much like a weak version of King Conan.



Mel Rubi's art still just seems...well, less good than the other artists who have worked on the various Sonja titles. It's not horrible, and certainly better than nothing, but when you have great art like the work in Wrath of the Gods, Mel's art just seems even less good.

Here are a couple of the pages that I thought were among the better illustrated in this issue:




The whole "Queen" thing just seems to have magically happened, too. Maye they're planning to go back and explain how she became queen or maybe I skipped an issue without realizing it, but I'm a little lost. And since when does Sonja cover herself with armor (yeah, I know - she didn't start out with the bikini, but it has become her thing and I'm not liking the changes!) And don't get me started on the wolfmen at the end of the issue. Seriously?

I'm not going to abandon the title (especially if the Lucio Parrillo covers continue to be so amazing), but I'm just saying it doesn't stack up as one of the better Sonja series that Dynamite has put out. Am I wrong? Is it really a good series and I'm just being an over-critical butthole? If so, tell me what I'm overlooking, because I don't get it.

WRATH of the GODS!!!

the "Wrath of the Gods."
Written by Luke Leiberman and Ethan Ryker, featuring the returning art of
Walter (RED SONJA) Geovani, WRATH OF THE GODS explores the mysteries of Sonja's past, while presenting her with the malicious threat of Loki in the present! Can Thor, the God of Thunder, and Odin, the All-Father, aid the warrior woman and prevent their fellow god from destroying the very world? Featuring a fully-painted cover by Lucio Parrillo.
COMING SOON FROM DYNAMITE ENTERTAINMENT.

While I know that Thor ,Odin and Loki are popularly Marvel comics characters people must take into consideration that these Norse deities who are commonly known in the Marvel Universe they are based on an ancient Pagan religion and are basically public domain. Anyone can write a story with THOR and ODIN. Now...the cool thing is this! RED SONJA is caught in the middle of a DAMNED GOD WAR! What part will she play in all of this? The suspense is killing me.
Needless to say I can't wait and I feel this series is going to be the coolest damned series since SAVAGE RED SONJA!
I can't wait and I'm going to be waiting in front of the comic shop day and night for the next issue. Who's with me?

Red Sonja: The Movie

So I watched the Red Sonja movie recently so that I could blog about it. I haven't seen it in years so I was looking forward to it. Maybe it wasn't that bad?

It took me about a week of real time to get through the first twenty minutes. I would watch a minute and then my eyes would go red with rage and my writing brain would scream about everything that is wrong with it and I would pass out from sheer hatred. Eventually I got past the horrible beginning and I stopped passing out. I even started enjoying it at some point.

There are two huge problems with the the Red Sonja movie. Problem one is the star, Brigitte Nielsen, does not in any way look like Red Sonja. I would argue that 80% of Red Sonja's appeal as a character is her flowing red hair and generous bosom. Brigitte Nielsen had a straight gold red mullet and less than ample endowments. Part of this comes from her really impressive physique and part of it comes from the lack of the Wonder Bra being invented. It was also the 80's where the media though androgyny was hot. Thorne's Red Sonja was a sword wielding hot chick. Brigitte Nielsen was a sword wielding hot boy.

The second problem with the Red Sonja movie is the lack of story from the original source material. In the comics, Red Sonja wanders around and gets into trouble. There is no great story to steal from like they did for the Conan movie. With an abscence of material, the movie seeks to fill in the blanks in a pretty laughable manner.

I am not sure what is more offensive about the beginning about the movie. Is it when Red Sonja is trained by an Asian cliche of a master? Is it when Red Sonja's family was killed because she wouldn't submit to a lesbian Queen? The 80's were truly a terrible time for tolerance.

Once Red Sonja gets past the worse 30 minutes in movie history, the movie is not bad for a b-movie fantasy adventure. Seriously. Quit snickering!

Look, we have a cast of amusing heroes. There is this toddler Prince who is Asian so of course he knows kung-fu. His kingdom is destroyed but he has a loyal henchmen who he abuses to comic effect. Small child abusing a fat man is movie gold.

We have the evil Queen herself who is magnificent. She wears a lot of black clothes, lives in a castle decorated pre-Hot Topic Goth and a sniveling toad of a general. She even has a giant spider as a pet! How cool is that?

We also have Conan, I mean Prince Kalidor who stalks Red Sonja and helps out with his bulging muscles. Okay, Prince Kalidor is not my favorite character but I got a weird satisfaction in watching Arnold play second fiddle to a woman in a movie genre that he perfected. It is like watching Gandalf playing an apprentice to Harry Potter. Oh wait, didn't I see that movie?

Anyhoo, the plot of the movie is about the Locknar from Heavy Metal movie being used to destroy kingdoms off screen. Red Sonja and her rather crappy adventuring party have to stop the Evil queen and by Crom, we have all seen this movie before. The thing is, if it wasn't called Red Sonja and was called something like "Bitchy Boy Woman" we would all list this as one of our cult favorites.

But because this is Red Sonja, we want more. We want beauty and savagery and no annoying kids. We want Red Sonja to not get disarmed in every single combat in the movie! We want the chainmail bikini. We want a woman so sexy that we debate losing an arm in challenging her. Instead we have a very butch angry woman who quite frankly makes me want to reccomend therapy rather than seduce her.

So yeah, the movie sucks. Worse than sucking, it ruined the franchise for quite a while. For fans of fantasy, it is our League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie. It is a crippling ax blow to the neck of Red Sonja fandom.

But you know, as a shitty movie it has its moments. What was your favorite moment?

Sonja and the Sisterhood of Steel

Many moons ago, I bought a book called Sword Song Sisterhood of Steel, a collection of artwork* featuring - you guessed it - medieval hotties with swords.

A few of the images feature she-devils wearing the armor that made Sonja famous: the good ol' chain mail bikini (or a reasonably brief alternative). The long manes of firey read hair make me wonder if each of these is actually just a rendering of Sonja.






All the chainmail bikini girls aren't redheads, though.




What is it about near-naked chicks and edged-weapons?


* I wish I knew who the respective artists were, but they weren't really identified in the book (anywhere I noticed, anyway).



Regarding the respective artists as mentioned in the comments...I was right about Blas Gallego, but the Fastner & Larson guess turned out to be wrong. David Dunstan did the blonde slicing her bikini bottom (it's also on the back cover).

I'm amazed that the individual artists are only noted in a passing way by the book on this title page. Very weird.

THORNE

Another look at a classic "Red Sonja" by Frank Thorne...nobody can deny that when Frank was given the ball he ran with it. He made RED SONJA what we think about when we picture her. The way she carried herself , her mannerisms and her body language were all conveyed with a most loose and perfect line work. Her swagger and posture and curves and even the way she held a sword. Her hair and her expressions it was all thanks to Frank Thorne. We love ye big guy! We owe you as much a debt of thanks as we owe REH or Roy Thomas. There are a lot of other fellas on deck but you are in the top 3 pal.

She-Devil with a Morning Star

The Lucio Parillo covers for Queen Sonja just keep getting better and better. Issue 3 is my favorite one yet. (Who says Sonja always has to fight with an edged weapon?)


I'm not as big a fan of Mel Rubi's artwork inside the book, but there are pages that definitely stand out.


If only the creative team for Dynamite's Highlander series had been as true to their source material, I might still be reading about the adventures of Connor Macleod. *sigh*

Red Sonja - the choice of rocks gods

I picked up a book from the discount rack at Barnes & Noble today, The Police 1978-1983 Lynn Goldsmith.

"And what" you're asking yourself, "could this possibly have to do with Red Sonja?"

Well, let me tell ya. As I was flipping through the photos in the book, I came across a photo of Stewart Copeland, the band's drummer, sitting in a room littered with guitars, recording equipment and various photos and posters on the walls. One item on the wall stood out to me immediately, though: an issue of Red Sonja.

How cool is that?

Beautiful...

I love the internet. You find the most amazing things. I actually let out a sigh when I saw this ANIME style rendition of SONJA. I think I'm in love with a drawing.
( Weirdo! )