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Marvel Feature: Red Sonja 1

Marvel Feature: Red Sonja 1

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marvel-feature-1-coverThere were a few bumps in the road to Red Sonja’s enduring success as a character/franchise. One of them is the rushed work on Marvel Feature 1, which was meant to be an audience test title. The rationale was that Sonja would appear in several issues of Marvel Feature and, if sales were good enough, would be awarded her own title.

But this really doesn’t read like an audition. It reads more like a fill-in issue. First of all, the story is only eight pages long. Red Sonja finds an ancient temple, mercy-kills a priest who’s been tortured, fights a pack of unarmed satyrs, and gets in one sword-fight. The artwork by Dick Giordano is good, but it’s not Barry Windsor-Smith or John Buscema (the two artists most strongly associated with the She-Devil up to this point). There’s none of the banter that she enjoyed with Conan and no hints of the character’s tragedy. The rest of the issue is a one-page text by Roy Thomas explaining the character’s background and a reprint of the story from Savage Sword of Conan 1 (now in color) where she killed a sultan after he forced her to take a bath.

Honestly, you don’t even get any of the monsters you see on the cover. No demons. No snakes. No skeletons in robes. And it’s a great cover, with Sonja in her trademark bikini, sword in one hand, dagger in the other. She’s even kicking a snake while  slashing at the “hordes of Hell.” It’s only sleazed up a little with the cheesecake pose in the corner label (which gets changed on issue 2).

In short, it’s a decent story, but nothing that would show readers unfamiliar with the character why Red Sonja is more than just a female Conan.

(originally published November 1975, Marvel Comics) (reprinted January 2007 in Adventures of Red Sonja Volume 1, Dynamite Entertainment)

And no bagpipes at my funeral.
And no bagpipes at my funeral.

Next Week: It Gets Better

In Defense of Red Sonja: The Vow

In Defense of Red Sonja: The Vow

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red-sonja-pinupThough interest in a modestly-dressed Red Sonja was strong in 1973, it skyrocketed in 1974 with the debut of her famous chain mail bikini in Savage Sword of Conan 1. Sonja returned in her trademark outfit later that year in Conan the Barbarian, issues 43 and 44. Titled “Tower of Blood” and “Of Flame and the Fiend!” respectively, the two-part story finds Conan and Sonja on the run from bounty hunters, sent by the sons of the king Sonja killed two stories earlier. They escape from the bounty hunters, only to find themselves trapped in a mist-enshrouded tower haunted by vampires. By this stage, I don’t understand why this sort of thing would even surprise Conan.

Beyond the predictable motivations of the brother and sister vampires (the brother vampire lusts after Sonja, while the sister vampire lusts after Conan, and the story ends with two dead vampires), we also get further glimpses into Red Sonja’s character. When Conan suggests that her lifestyle is not a woman’s way, her response is, “You’d have me marry, I suppose, raise brats instead of hell.” (That quote should be on a t-shirt.) Further, when the vampire woman attempts to seduce Conan, he asks Sonja if she’s jealous. Her response is neither a passionate denial nor an admission: “There is no place for such womanish things in my life! Sometimes, I almost want there to be, but there is not and there never will be.” Again, her vow is something she will staunchly uphold, but it seems to be one she regrets. Which begs the question of to whom she made the vow, if not to herself.

Further, we see Sonja several times bristle over the Cimmerian helping her. She hates being in anyone’s debt. She’s not above manipulating others into helping her, but aid freely and knowingly given unnerves her. Of course, after rescuing her from bounty hunters and vampires this issue, the debt between them appears to be fairly even (if one counts the times she rescued Conan in earlier adventures). So it’s understandable that the story ends not with a friendly handshake or even a chaste kiss, but with Sonja bashing Conan on the back of the head with a rock, knocking him out so she can make her escape and not risk falling into his debt.

After that two-parter, the four Red Sonja stories published in 1975 were all solo tales. Apparently, the character had finally become popular enough to not need the additional presence of Conan. The first of these stories, “Episode,” (originally published as a back-up story in Conan the Barbarian 48) is a fairly light piece where she is attacked by a giant spider, then a wizard determined to sacrifice her to demons. The second story, “She-Devil with a Sword,” (originally in Kull and the Barbarians 2) is a strange re-interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood, albeit with more tragedy.

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In Defense of Red Sonja: The Chain Mail Bikini

In Defense of Red Sonja: The Chain Mail Bikini

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ssc1-hat-trickAfter only two appearances in Conan the Barbarian (issues 23 and 24), Red Sonja was already on her way to becoming a fan favorite. A strong, intelligent woman with the courage of Conan, if not his strict moral code (or upper body strength). Her dress sense (a chain mail tunic and red shorts) provided ease of movement and showed just enough skin to be sexy without being exploitive.

So where did the chain mail bikini come from?

Before the Internet, fan art was published mostly in fanzines or pin-up pages in comics.  Artist Esteban Maroto was the first to draw Red Sonja in her now-famous bikini and, having nowhere else to publish it, mailed it to Conan writer/editor Roy Thomas. The visual was so striking that, when she next made an appearance, artist John Buscema drew her in the same outfit. Furthermore, Maroto was hired to draw the back-up story in that same issue. And to make it a hat-trick, a third artist (none other than Boris Vallejo) painted the cover art with the metallic swimwear.

The issue where all this took place would have been iconic anyway. Savage Sword of Conan 1 premiered in August 1974. The popularity of Conan the Barbarian had made the publication of a second Conan book just good business sense. To give you an idea of just how popular the character was, Marvel wouldn’t get around to publishing two Spider-Man titles until 1976.

Of course, Savage Sword would promise to be far from more-of-the-same. Its format as an over-sized black-and-white publication classified it as a magazine rather than a comic book. “So what?” you may ask. In 1974, comics were still heavily regulated by the Comics Code Authority. There was only so much violence (and sex) that could be shown in Conan the Barbarian. But as a ‘magazine’, Savage Sword of Conan could show as much violence (and, eventually, nudity) as Marvel dared. And as the series went on, they dared a lot.

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In Defense of Red Sonja: Not the Female Conan

In Defense of Red Sonja: Not the Female Conan

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red-sonja-0-cover2Red Sonja is nearing forty and, even if you don’t recognize the name, you know her. She’s the original girl in the chain mail bikini. There have been warrior women before (Jirel of Joiry) and since (Xena). But when you imagine sexist cheesecake portrayals of women in fantasy, the sort of thing modern creators try to avoid at all costs, you imagine Red Sonja, She-Devil with a Sword. And, frankly, she’s gotten a bad rap.

She’s a bit of an accidental icon, the sort of strong female character that could only be imagined by men in the midst of the Sexual Revolution.

The Shadow of the Vulture

Red Sonja was originally created by Roy Thomas (though based heavily on Robert E. Howard’s Red Sonya from “Shadow of the Vulture”) as a supporting character in the Conan the Barbarian series. The idea was to present a recurring female character who wasn’t just rescue bait for the Cimmerian, someone who could handle herself in a fight and win his respect as well as an appreciative leer. The iconic red hair was chosen simply because the only two prominent female adventurers in Howard’s original Conan stories were Belit (black hair) and Valeria (blond hair) and Thomas wanted an easy way to differentiate her from them.

Red Sonja first appeared in Conan the Barbarian 23 (February 1973) in a story also titled, “Shadow of the Vulture” (a loose adaptation transposing the setting from the 16th century Ottoman Empire to the Hyborian Age). Conan first encounters her as he races to the gates of Makkalet, a hundred raiders following behind him. As the gates open and Conan is running in, we see Red Sonja running out to meet the raiders, with sword drawn and her own mercenary army at her back. Within five panels of her first appearance, we get the classic description of Red Sonja as “a she-devil more beautiful than the flames of Hell.”

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Roy Thomas’s Alter Ego looks at Sword & Sorcery in the Comics

Roy Thomas’s Alter Ego looks at Sword & Sorcery in the Comics

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alter-ego-80Roy Thomas’s Alter Ego is a terrific magazine — packed with articles, interviews, and loads of art from vintage comics. So packed, in fact, that I can’t remember the last time I read one cover-to-cover. These days when a new issue arrives, I flip though it joyfully, then add it to the teetering stack to be enjoyed later.

That stack finally toppled, spilling all over the floor, and while I was cleaning it up and carting it to the basement (excuse me, to the Cave of Wonders), I found a handful of issues from 2008 and 2009 I’d been meaning to blog about. Specifically, those containing a massive three-part investigation of, and tribute to, Sword & Sorcery in the Comics.

Better late than never, I thought, and brought them back up out of the subterranean vault. Let’s start with the first one, Alter Ego #80, dated August 2008. It is wrapped in a new cover by Rafael Kayanan and contains John Wells’s fabulously detailed 34-page article “Sword & Sorcery in the Comics: Part I of a Study of Robert E. Howard’s Legacy in Four Colors — and in Black-&-White.” As Thomas says in his editorial:

You’d have thought I’d have done this a long time before now, wouldn’t you? Devote an issue of Alter Ego to sword-and-sorcery in comics, I mean… I just kept putting it off. It’s a big subject, after all, because, much as I’d like to think otherwise, comic book S&S didn’t begin with Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian #1 in 1970 — or even with the couple of forerunners at DC (“Nightmaster”) and Marvel (“Starr the Slayer”) in the previous twelvemonth…

“Sword & Sorcery in the Comics” proved way too big a subject to cover in one issue… in the end, because we wanted to illustrate nearly every one of the examples of the game we were discussing, we found ourselves with only room for the S&S overview I talked John Wells into writing especially for this magazine… in Alter Ego #83, Part Two will be slashing its way toward you. After that, we’ll keep the S&S segments coming, every few issues, till we’ve covered the genre the way we’ve always intended to! We figured it’s high time.

Appropriately enough, Wells begins his article with a look at Robert E. Howard and his profound influence on the entire field.

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Plethora of Howard Days Panels on Youtube

Plethora of Howard Days Panels on Youtube

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howard-daysIf you didn’t make it out to Cross Plains Texas for Robert E. Howard Days this past June (I didn’t, and have not yet made the trip, though it is on my bucket list), despair not: You can experience the panels, vicariously, through the magic of Youtube.

Videographer Ben Friberg filmed several of the panels and generously posted them for public consumption. They’re all incredibly interesting and fun, if you like this sort of thing. Here’s a quick list of links.

First up is Howard and Academia, a panel discussion led by Mark Finn (author of the excellent REH biography Blood and Thunder), Jeff Shanks, and guest of honor Charles Hoffman. Despite the old labels (lightweight, escapist, etc.) that continue to dog his works, Howard is starting to creep his way into academia. Here Finn, Shanks, and Hoffman describe some of REH’s academic inroads and discuss what it will take to push Howard studies into the classroom.

Part 1

Part 2

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Vintage Treasures: The Barbarians Anthology Series

Vintage Treasures: The Barbarians Anthology Series

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barbariansThere’s been some good discussion of Sword & Sorcery on the BG blog of late, from Brian Murphy’s excellent list of “A Half-Dozen Swords And Sorcery Short Stories Worth Your Summer Reading Time, and Howard Andrew Jones’s skillful examination of the writing technique of the genre’s patriarch, “Under the Hood with Robert E. Howard,” to Joe Bonadonna’s warm reminiscence of the very best S&S of his youth, “How I Met Your Cimmerian (and other Barbarian Swordsmen).”

I thought I was pretty well educated in Sword & Sorcery; but it’s the sign of a rich and vibrant genre that it can still surprise you after decades of collecting.

That’s exactly what happened when I found the artifact at left, buried deep in a paperback science fiction collection I recently purchased.

Barbarians was a major S&S retrospective anthology published by Signet in 1986. It was edited by Robert Adams, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles Waugh, and contained stories by Fritz Leiber, Fred Saberhagen, Andre Norton, Karl Edward Wagner, and many more. It’s a thick paperback original with 13 short stories.

And no, I’d never seen a copy before — or its sequel. Here’s the back cover copy:

From a beautiful huntress with glittering eyes and a killing kiss to mighty Conan’s struggle in a deadly place beyond magic… from a distant planet fated to do battle with the forgotten past to primeval swordsmen pledged to protect a besieged land — here are tales of titanic strength and unearthly courage, of savage warriors facing incredible challenges in the far-flung realms of the imagination.

Sounds pretty good. Not entirely sure how this one escaped me for all these years, but I’m glad I’ve stumbled across it now.

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The Return of Brak the Barbarian

The Return of Brak the Barbarian

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witch-of-the-four-winds2E-book publisher Open Road Media has announced the publication of two omnibus editions of John Jakes’ fondly-remembered Sword & Sorcery hero Brak the Barbarian.

Witch of the Four Winds and Brak the Barbarian will be available in digital format at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com on July 31 for $4.99 each (before discounting).

Brak the Barbarian first appeared in Fantastic magazine in the short story “The Devils in the Walls” (1963). Over the next few years, Jakes produced over a dozen short stories and novellas featuring Brak, that he gradually collected and expanded into five books, published between 1968 and 1980.

Brak the Barbarian contains the 1968 short story collection Brak the Barbarian and the novel Mark of the Demons (1969), plus additional Brak stories and an illustrated biography of Jakes with rare images from the author’s personal collection.

Witch of the Four Winds contains two more early novels: Witch of the Four Winds — originally published under that title in Fantastic magazine in 1963, and then revised and expanded in novel format as Brak the Barbarian Versus the Sorceress (1969) — and When the Idols Walked (Fantastic 1964, expanded and released under the same title in 1978), plus more bonus stories and an illustrated biography.

Jakes’ Brak the Barbarian stories were strongly influenced by Robert E. Howard’s Conan. In the YouTube video Open Road created to promote the launch of the digital editions, Jakes says:

I was directly influenced by Robert Howard, by the fact that there weren’t enough Conan stories to go around… I wanted to create a character much like Conan, put him in similar circumstances, and have a good time writing them.

For science fiction fans, Open Road has also collected two early SF novels by Jakes in a third omnibus collection: On Wheels (1973) and Six-Gun Planet (1970). It’s also available July 31.

Robert E. Howard: The Sword Collector’s Sword Collection

Robert E. Howard: The Sword Collector’s Sword Collection

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From Damon Sasser’s twogunraconteur.com website 3/5/2012
From Damon Sasser’s twogunraconteur.com website 3/5/2012

When I wrote “Robert E. Howard: The Sword Collector and His Poetry” in August 2010, it was to highlight REH’s interest in swords. The article listed each type of sword mentioned in his poems along with a definition, a photo and a snippet showing REH’s usage of it in verse.

At that time, the photograph at right was not available. In fact, it is one of three that were discovered earlier this year by Howard scholar Patrice Louinet, showing Robert E. Howard (r) and his two neighbors, Leroy Butler and Leroy’s sister, Faustine, dressed as pirates.

According to Patrice, this photo was taken sometime between 1923 and 1925. That would make Howard between 17 and 19 years old. It was during this period, in November 1924, that REH received a letter from Farnsworth Wright that Weird Tales was accepting his story “Spear and Fang,” which was eventually published in July 1925.

Whether the story had been written, sold, and published by the time this photo was taken is unknown. But REH’s love of swords and the adventure they brought were definitely a part of his life even at an early age.

The other piece of information not available in August 2010 regarded the sword collection itself. The article “Robert E. Howard: The Sword Collector and His Poetry” began with a quote from a letter REH wrote to HPL:

…Long ago I started collecting them [swords], but found it a taste far too expensive for my means. I still have the things I did manage to get hold of—a few sabers, swords, bayonets and the like.

While REH mentions collecting swords, at that time there was no further information regarding its contents. That has changed. Recently I received an email from Howard sleuth Patrice that sheds more light on what swords REH owned. Patrice’s sources are the notes that L. Sprague de Camp took to document his telephone conversations with Earl Baker. Earl was one of REH’s early Cross Cut friends and someone REH kept in touch with throughout the years.

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Under the Hood with Robert E. Howard

Under the Hood with Robert E. Howard

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best-of-robert-e-howard-grim-lands2When I tell people what a great writer Robert E. Howard was, a lot of them don’t seem to believe me. If they only know him through depictions of Conan or, worse, rip-offs, then they think Howard’s writing is all about a dull guy in a loin cloth fighting monsters and lots of straining bosoms. It’s not that Robert E. Howard thought himself above describing a lithesome waist or a wilting beauty, especially if he needed to make a quick buck, it’s just that there’s a lot more going on in a Conan story than his imitators took away.

It’s easy to pull some samples of great action writing from Robert E. Howard. I’ve done it before, and I could easily do it again here. Only a handful of writers can approach him in that field, and almost none are his equal.

He was also a master of headlong, driving pace. That can be hard to showcase without insisting you read an entire story, so today I want to show readers who seem unaware of his work (or those who are uninterested) a few more reasons why those of us in the know revere him so highly.

Here in one of his historical stories, ”Lord of Samarcand,” is the Scotsman, or Frank, as the easterners call any from Europe, Donald MacDeesa, riding to the court of Tamarlane the Great. See how swiftly, how easily, Howard conjures the scene in all its splendor with just a few well-chosen words, as though he’s panning a camera as MacDeesa rides.

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