Anyone pick up Red Sonja #0 today?

Looks like Dynamite Entertainment will be putting out the new Red Sonja comic series. It shall be interesting to see if they do as well as DH with Conan.
 
I picked it up. The art was all right, fairly decent.

I laughed a bit at the cheesecake shot of RS's breasts while someone comments "You're a strong woman. You fear no man..."

Not much story - just a bit of a vignette, really - and aside from the inside cover, almost no mention of the Hyborian world.

Sadly, also, nowhere in the credits is Roy Thomas given his due, either, which makes me a bit annoyed.
 
According to an interview, the comic's writer states that Red Sonja is a character created by Howard, which is wrong. The character Red Sonja was created by Thomas and first appeared in "Shadow of the Vulture" in the Marvel Conan comic. [The comic appears in Volume 4 of recent The Chronicles of Conan reprints by Dark Horse] She is based very loosely on a character on a non-Conan Howard tale by the same name, but that is a story set in the Middle Ages, not Hyboria and that charcter's name is Sonya, I believe. The only character similiar to her written by Howard for the Hyborian Age is Valeria of "Red Nails", who is a blond pirate captain.

All of which leads to me believe that the writers aren't terribly concerned with keeping their facts straight. That combined with clothing Sonja in an S&M costume and the awful dialogue makes me happier with Thomas's version in the Conan reprints.

Raven
 
I don't think it's much of a stretch to consider that RS is essentially RS of Rogatino and so REH created her.

The costume is the licensors' doing.

On the other hand, this comic is not set in the Hyborian Age, is it?

(Why are some Mongoose sources now referring to 'Hyboria'?)
 
Be interesting to see as the two names mentioned in the previews Zeddas and the Kingdom of Gathia aren't Hyborian Age names we know .

Terry
 
Faraer said:
I don't think it's much of a stretch to consider that RS is essentially RS of Rogatino and so REH created her.

Yes, but I bet you a small amount of money the writers don't know about the original version of RS as written by Howard, just the Thomas version.

The costume is the licensors' doing.

And denotes todays trashy trends and a lack of imagination on the artist's part. 'Hey we've got a female character. Let's dress her like a prostitute." Y'know my female characters tend to dress pretty conservatively and rely on my story telling abilities, not a similiarity to the pornographic fantasies of young boys.

On the other hand, this comic is not set in the Hyborian Age, is it?

Guess not- but doesn't that make it not really the original Sonja? Since I advocate change I'm not complaining, just pointing out that they are billing it as Howard's character to try and catch ahold of some of DH's well deserved success on Conan.

(Why are some Mongoose sources now referring to 'Hyboria'?)

:?:

Raven
 
Faraer said:
I don't think it's much of a stretch to consider that RS is essentially RS of Rogatino and so REH created her.

The costume is the licensors' doing.

On the other hand, this comic is not set in the Hyborian Age, is it?

(Why are some Mongoose sources now referring to 'Hyboria'?)

The costume is the "classic" one associated with the character, as originally designed by Frank Thorne. It's cheesecake, but is as strongly a part of the character as Buscema's furry Conan undershorts.

The comic is set in the Hyborian Age. The intro is a quote from the Nemedian Chronicles, and mentions Conan. Sonja's country of origin is Hyrkania (a bit inexplicable).

Not sure what you mean by Mongoose using the word 'Hyboria'. Why is that strange - it's the name of the continent Conan lives on.
 
Is it the name of the continent? I thought it was just the name of a people and the age that they dominated.
 
Faraer said:
Is it the name of the continent? I thought it was just the name of a people and the age that they dominated.

REH's history of the age calls the continent "Thuria" during Kull's era, and calls it "the Hyborian kingdoms" after the rise of the Hyborian people and the sinking of the Thurian continent.

It seems no great stretch to call it Hyboria.
 
I didnt like it, besides the ridiculous costume, the whole "cheesecake" nature of it turned me off a bit. Im willing to give it a few issues before I decide completely though, it was only a small preview, and what they have in store for the regular comic sounds good.

But really, that idiotic costume HAS to go! (I imagine she must have cuts all over her body thanks to it, not to mention it rusting in the rain...)
 
Merecedes Lackey, once an author of sword and sorcery before settling down into sword and romance, once wrote a little read story that included a critque of other author's fictional heroes. About Red Sonya she pointed out that having armor plates without a padding of leather and chain would cause a person to be injured worse as the metal plates would be driven into the skin. Also, wouldn't covering the more vulverable parts of the body be logical? 8)

As for cheesecake, yeah I'm not fond of it. It is a bit insulting to females that we are depicted as 'rape-bait' in modern fantasy. Not only does this encourage most men to think of us as a disposable luxury and good for only one thing, it also causes some younger girls to have warped self images. Recently, The San Fransisco Chronicle ran a story on girls 14-16 who are abusing steroids to try and attain the 'perfect' image of fit and large breasted women plastered on comic and magazine covers and advertisements. However, since the girls are still in puberty, the steroids mess up their natural steroid production, which will undoubtly cause severe medical problems down the road. In addition, they rarely attain a good body shape or if they do, possess it for long. The kicker of it though, is that the figure portrayed by modern advertising/visual media is unattainable. People with the sort of measurements the images and altered photos would be nearly crippled. [A feminist scholar once pointed out that Barbie would be in great pain and reduced to crawling were she a real woman with the proportions of the doll] So in trying to obtain the perfect ideal, the merely attainable is destroyed.

Raven, who isn't anyone's poster girl, but worth knowing anyway
 
Well I didnt think about it all that much, I did hear of the story you mentioned about the steroids and everything, but I dont think the comic is going to be contributing to anything on that scale. I just think its a ridiculous costume (imagine Conan in metal underwear!) and it just seemed like the art was just deliberately played up to show off her figure.

If they just made her outfit out of animal hides or whatever and concentrated on telling the story rather than taking opportunities to show off her figure, it would be a *much* better comic.

I mean, im not a prude, I wasnt offended as such, it just makes it seem like they have no idea how to tell the story without falling back on pathetic cliches, and thats what annoyed me :)

As I said, ill still buy it for 6 or so issues to see how they go with it, maybe once they get a whole story arc together it will be better :)
 
Raven Blackwell said:
[A feminist scholar once pointed out that Barbie would be in great pain and reduced to crawling were she a real woman with the proportions of the doll]

A child with the proportions of Richie Rich would be unable to walk, due to the immense weight of his huge head and his stunted, smallish limbs, but few folks* are claiming that Harvey Comics are giving children unattainable self-images.

Just putting that into perspective.

* I was going to type "no one" but realized that there's probably someone out there who is terribly offended by Richie Rich's proportions.
 
Good point Jason :D

The biggest problem with the first Sonja comic was it wasn't that great of a story. The cheesecake was predictable and something I hope is not presented as much in the monthly comic. I'll stick around - rumor has it that issue #2 kickoff's a Thulsa Doom storyline... 8)
 
I just found out that the owners of the Red Sonja characters were the ones who insisted on having her in that ridiculous outfit, so I guess there was nothing the writers/artists could do about it.

That doesnt make the actual story from issue #0 any better, but it explains the dopey outfit at least :)
 
Jason Durall said:
A child with the proportions of Richie Rich would be unable to walk, due to the immense weight of his huge head and his stunted, smallish limbs, but few folks* are claiming that Harvey Comics are giving children unattainable self-images.

Ah, but no one expects a child to conform to Richie Rich's proportions. [At least no one remotely on this side of sanity] Women are expected by soem to keep up the image of Red Sonja, Barbie, various 'nimbos' [ninja/bimbos] and a a large variety of large breasted, vacant headed females of fiction. Not every one mind you, just a vast majority. After all, as the French film Demonlover shows there is even a market for pirnography and prostitutes based on comic book/video game/sci-fi/fantasy/horror genres- and some of it is the type where the degrade the image of a strong woman. Kind of obvious symbolism there, eh? [Mother issues, anyone?]

I am however, not sexist about this. The 'beefcake' male image and the impossibly virile/violent/unbeatable/rich.succesful male image [of which Conan touches on 8)] is just as damaging to the male psyche. No one could accomplish this- there isn't enough stanima or time to do so. Not to mention no one possesses script immunity- bullets will hit you and people can be killed even if it not a dramtically appropiate time.

Now in a world where soccer moms are the biggest growing population of crystal meth addicts because the need the extra 'pep' to keep going, where middle age men bankrupt their retirement funds to buy corvettes, get hair implants and try and afford a mistress to feel 'young' and where kids are taking steroids and buying exam answers to get 'ahead' and where college students have been known to commit suicide if they don't get straight 'A's, can't we all just y'know, slow down a bit? This doesn't seem healthy, no matter what the size of our plasma screen TVs.

Raven, who doesn't own a TV- or a telephone- or a car- or massive debt.
 
spawn said:
I just found out that the owners of the Red Sonja characters were the ones who insisted on having her in that ridiculous outfit, so I guess there was nothing the writers/artists could do about it.

That doesnt make the actual story from issue #0 any better, but it explains the dopey outfit at least :)

Agreed. Back to original thread- the story sucked.

And who by the by 'owns' Red Sonja?

Raven
 
Raven Blackwell said:
the story sucked.

Exactly :) I know it was only a 16 page comic but there was no context, it was ridiculous, it was just Sonja getting into a fight and a few extraneous captions to try and make it seem "deep". The art was great as was the colouring, and ill still pick up the regular series of it, but it wasnt a very good introduction.
 
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