Sonja is a beloved fantasy icon
RED SONJA is one of the classic characters of sword and sorcery who has inspired a hundred imitators as well as helped make action girls more acceptable in Modern Fantasy. However, she’s unfortunately suffered from being effectively reduced to a joke about her infamous chainmail bikini.
Gail Simone opens her omnibus discussing this dichotomy with the fact that she was part of the periphery demographic of comic book readers that absolutely loved Red Sonja as an ass-kicking, deep, and fascinating character in her own right. Yes, this small and ignored group of people called women that compromised half the human population as well as a significant chunk of comic book readers. In fact, had always been so. When given the chance to write the character, she lept at the chance and decided to put her own spin on it.
Gail Simone’s issue with the She-Devil isn’t that she wears the chain-mail bikini or fanservice. There’s quite a bit of both in the book, though Sonja wears quite a bit more clothes and armor than usual. No, her primary issue is with the other thing that she was most infamous for: her rape backstory, empowerment by Scathach, and the oath to never be with a man unless he beats her in battle. Her opinion on that? “That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard in my life.”
Indeed, Red Sonja is deliberately not chaste in this reboot of her character and spends a not-insignificant portion of Simone’s run trying to get laid. Gail Simone throws quite a number of humorous obstacles to explain why Red Sonja, looking like the original swimwear model, has difficulty with this and it is always hilarious. More controversially, Gail Simone makes it clear that Sonja is bisexual as well. Which perhaps was done due to the character’s somewhat checkered history with queer representation.
Fine, let Sonja be horny and a party animal but Gail Simone flat out makes her seem dumb at times as well as a caricature of Conan–who was, himself, never dumb save when caricatured. To seasoned Conan pastiche readers, you’d know that Conan is Chaotic Neutral occasionally bordering on Chaotic Good while Sonja was always Chaotic Good, occasionally bordering on Neutral or even Lawful Good.
In conclusion, I definitely recommend this book for fantastic art, fantastic action, and something that goes a long way to reminding readers while Sonja is a beloved fantasy icon. However, I feel it goes a little too far in changing her backstory as I always liked the Scathach connection. I also don’t think it was a good idea portraying Sonja as sometimes bordering on a complete dumbass. Which has never been part of her characterization.
