Red Sonja

• Title: Red Sonja: Black, White, Red #5
• Comic Vine: link
• Writers: Jacob Edgar, Oliver Gerlach, Frank Tieri
• Artist: Giorgio Spalletta, Alex Moore, Lee Ferguson

Three more tales of Red Sonja are captured here by various writers and artists. Each story from Red Sonja: Black, White, Red #5 has a common theme of Sonja being either the hunter or the hunted.

My favorite of the three tales, in “The Hunted” Baron Raaf has hired an assortment of mercenaries to hunt Red Sonja but the She-Devil with a Sword dispatches them one by one before going after the man who sent them.

Red Sonja hunts a witch and fights werewolves on the side of a mountain in “The Chill Touch of Sorcery!” And Sonja meets a new challenger in the brash “Erik the Black: He-Demon with an Axe” who walks into a tavern boasting of his greatness to Sonja but never walks out.

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• Title: Red Sonja: Black, White, Red #4
• Comic Vine: link
• Writers: Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Sanya Anwar, Chuck Brown
• Artists: Steve Beach, Sanya Anwar, Drew Moss

Three more black and white tales of Red Sonja are collected in Red Sonja: Black, White, Red #4. The bandit hordes of Turan invade in “The Iron Queen” only to be turned back by an old queen who takes up the sword for the first time in years remembering the warrior she once was. Sonja travels through a cold wasteland in “Cold Monger” where a king’s magic steals the warmth and fire from his subjects.

The best of the three tales, “The Iron Maiden,” features some great humor (almost all of it at Sonja’s expense) and some of my favorite art of the series so far. A wounded Red Sonja is found and tended to in the woods by a local woman, although the wounded She-Devil with a Sword struggles to return the favor when Onelia attempts to save her village from traders get her into trouble.

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• Title: Red Sonja #2
• Comic Vine: link
• Writers: Mirka Andolfo, Luca Blengino
• Artist: Giuseppe Cafaro

In Part 2 of “Mother,” a bruised and battered Sonja awakes on a farm in Brythunia and tended to by a lumberjack and carpenter named Samosh, who took the unconscious Sonja and the young Sitha in. There’s more humor than action in Red Sonja #2 which feels very much like a middle issue of a larger story. Much of the issue takes place around the recovering Sonja and her respite before completing her duty to deliver her charge.

Sitha isn’t pleased to leave the comforts of Samosh’s home, nor to see Sonja move on after completing the job she was paid for. However, the story does set-up an uneasiness for Sonja as she returns only to discover the girl gone and warlocks and necromancers in her way likely leading to a more action-packed third issue.

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• Title: Red Sonja: Black, White, Red #3
• Comic Vine: link
• Writers: Gail Simone, Dearbhla Kelly, Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
• Artists: Walter Geovani, Soo Lee, Jonathan Lau

Red Sonja: Black, White, Red #3 offers three more separate tales of Red Sonja in black and white… and red. The third issue of the anthology is notable for offering not one but two separate tales without any dialogue.

The only tale with dialogue, “Small Tales,” is notable for having a character that won’t shut-up when Sonja comes across a young girl who manages to momentarily snare Sonja in a trap. Our heroine helps the young girl home, only to discover she is not the orphan she claimed to be but a runaway who hoped to meet her hero.

“Dawn of a Crimson Day” from Gail Simone offers snapshots across Sonja’s timeline, beautifully rendered by Walter Geovani, giving us Sonja as a child and a distant future featuring a one-eyed She-Devil with a Sword continuing her adventures.

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