Comic book fans you'll know doubt know that i'm a bit of a comic book fans i'm not going to say that i'm a die hard fan but if something has her name on it i'll be interested. So imagine my intrigue when I found out that there was a new graphic novel released about the character and i'm going to be freaking blunt it's a really good read and so here is my review of Red Sonja: The Ballad Of The Red Goddess.
To put it simply the plot of this book is pretty much the exact same plot as that of I Spit On Your Grave (don't watch that movie by the way) in that a woman gets "attacked" and she ends up getting revenge only tho here the girl is Red Sonja and she swears to kill all of the men who have wronged her. If your on certain apps you'll know why I put the word attacked in brackets because it goes back to my review of I Spit On Your Grave and I have to say that the plot really does work for this character.
I know it looks like i'm being lazy just by using the second page of this graphic novel and you'd be right. This novel was published by Dynamite who have killing it with there Sonja output and it's the same here this book is so freaking good i;m not going to say that it's a must read since it's an origin story and just by that you know how the story is going to end but how the book gets us there that for me is the interesting part.
Now this is book was actually first published in Spain some time ago but this is the first time that it's been published in English. I'm honestly all for English speaking characters getting stories published outside of English speaking countries since characters can speak to anyone no matter what the language is and given how good this book is i'm glad that it's finally made it's way to English speaking countries.
They don't really name that many characters in this book in fact only two characters are named and of course one of those is the titular Red Sonja with the other one being Morrigan. To me that's really odd since in any book regardless if it's a graphic novel or not there's alot more characters named and so to only have two of them named in this book does seem odd and I know that it's a strange thing to talk about but one of the unnamed characters is also the villain and so you'd have thought they would have gave the villain a name.
The writer for the book is Roy Thomas who's mostly written stuff for Marvel with things like the 1968 Captain Marvel series to name but one of the many things he's written for. If you think he's worked with high profile Marvel characters you'd be right because he's written for The Hulk , Captain America and Iron Man. That said tho for me his writing seemed very lack luster which is a shame because he's also written for Red Sonja back in the seventies when the character was at Marvel.
In my opinion Red Sonja is a great example of a strong female character since she's not only able to kick anyone's a*s but she's also a flawed character. For some reason people think that strong female characters need to be physically strong but that's not the case at all the only thing they need to be is a good character and that's what Sonja is she's a good character she can kick your a*s and yet she can still fall in love.
In terms of who did the artwork it was Esteban Maroto who's a mostly unknown Spanish artist and i'd say he's highest profile character was the 1993 Zatanna series. Which is a shame because the guy does have some talent but his work here seemed to be very minimalistic because as you can see by the above picture apart from the colour red it's all black and white and it's an interesting style choice and I think that it works for this book.
While this book is basically an origin story for Sonja it tells that part of the story in what i think is an interesting way. It's not due to what we see play out on the page but rather the language they use which to me read like it was very Shakespearean and that was interesting to me because all of the other RS books that i've read it's like there speaking medevil english i'm not sure if anyone else has thought of that but it was something that I noticed while reading this book.
Now I never talk about the designs when I review a comic book and well i'm going to change that right now because I liked the design that they went with for Sonja. She still looks alot like the character so you know that it's her but she looks like a version of the character from the eighties with the big hair and that to me was an interesting way to go with her at least design wise since I cannot think of a time where the character has had big hair so to me it just screams eighties.
I will say that unlike I Spit On Your Grave which shows the "attack" on the girl in alot of detail (i'm not kidding the whole thing goes on for thirty minuets) this book goes over it in about a page which freaking honestly suits me because the "attack" scene in I Spit On Your Grave is so disturbing so anything that has that kind of scene for alot less then what I Spit On Your Grave does gets a huge thumbs up in my opinion.
I will say that it honestly seems right the kind of attack i'm talking about helps make Sonja the vengeful hero that we know her to be. I;m sorry that I keep bringing this up but unlike I Spit On Your Grave there's little doubt in anyone's mind that Sonja is the hero and they don't try and flip convention by having the main hero be a killer which was what they did with I Spit On Your Grave.
Here Sonja was already pretty handy with a sword prior to the attack so we know that she can kick some a*s even tho she's still learning. Now I wouldn't go as far to say that that's any gore in this book inf act the most gore you see comes in the word bubbles when they describe what she's going to do with the sword however it's still not for the faint hearted since there is the "attack" scene and yes I will explain what I mean by that at the end of the review so it will all make sense then.
There's a ton of action in this book and when I say a ton I really do mean it since like 90% of the book is all action. I have to admit i'm not quite sure how I feel about that since it does leave very little room for story and in my eyes that matters more then having a great looking action scene but tho the action seen in here is honestly pretty cool and it does lead to some cool looking images most of which you can see in this review.
Overall this is a really cool book with some interesting art choices but due to how many action scenes there are that does leave very little room for the story and so the book gets an 8 out of 10 for me. Now as I promised the reason why I out attack in brackets is because what really happens is a word that i'm not comfortable with but if you really want to know it's ape with an R infront of it.