Red Sonja
She-devil with a sword!

Red Sonja, redheaded “warrior woman out of majestic Hyrkania”, was created by Roy Thomas and first appearing in “The Shadow of the Vulture” and “The Song of Red Sonja” in Marvel Comics’ Conan the Barbarian #23 and #24 (left).

She was loosely based on the character Red Sonya of Rogatino in Robert E. Howard’s short story “The Shadow of the Vulture” (The Magic Carpet Magazine, January 1934). (She also bears more than a passing resemblance to Howard’s other red-headed heroine, Agnes de Chastillion.)

Thomas rewrote this as a Conan story for the Marvel comic, reinventing REH’s Red Sonya, making her a heroine of Conan’s Hyborian Age, tweaking the spelling of her name, and giving her a sword instead of her guns.

Subsequent to her appearance in Conan the Barbarian, Red Sonja guested in other Conan stories in The Savage Sword of Conan and Conan the King.

Solo stories appeard in several other issues of The Savage Sword of Conan and in two issues of Kull and the Barbarians.

Red Sonja’s origins were “revealed” in the story “The Day of the Sword”, which first appeared in Kull and the Barbarians #3 by Roy Thomas, Doug Moench and Howard Chaykin. This was later redrawn by Dick Giordano and Terry Austin for The Savage Sword of Conan #78.

Red Sonja lived with her family in the Western Hyrkanian steppes. When she had just turned 17-years old, a group of mercenaries killed her family and burned down their house. Brutally raped by the leader of the group, Sonja surviced by was left in shame. Answering her cry for revenge, the red goddess Scathach appeared and instilled Sonja with incredible skill in arms – contingent on her never lying with a man but he first defeated her in fair combat.

Eponymous comics

Red Sonja got her own Marvel comic series in the 1970s and 1980s.

• Marvel Features Presents Red Sonja (1975-76); illustrated by Dick Giordano (#1) and Frank Thorne (#2-#7)
• Red Sonja Series 1 (1977-79; 15 issues); illustrated by Frank Thorne
• Red Sonja Series 2 (1983; 2 issues)
• Red Sonja Series 3 (1983-86; 13 issues)

A few further comics appeared during the 1990s from different publishers.

• Red Sonja: Scavenger Hunt (Marvel Comics 1995)
• Red Sonja in 3-D (Blackthorne 1998)
• Red Sonja: A Death in Scarlet (Cross Plains Comics 1999)

In 2005, Dynamite Entertainment started publishing collections of the Marvel Red Sonja stories, as well as a new comic series (much as Dark Horse has done with Conan).

Novels

Red Sonja also appeared in several novels by David C. Smith and Richard L. Tierney, with covers by Boris Vallejo:

• #1 The Ring of Ikribu (Ace 1981)
  • Adapted by Roy Thomas and Estaban Maroto in The Savage Sword of Conan #230-233
• #2 Demon Night (Ace 1982)
• #3 When Hell Laughs (Ace 1982)
• #4 Endithor’s Daughter (Ace 1982)
• #5 Against the Prince of Hell (Ace 1983)
• #6 Star of Doom (Ace 1983)

In a recent interview , Tierney was asked ―

Were there some strict parameters to deal with from Thomas and/or Ace publishing or did they pretty much give you and David free rein?

He replied ―

We were told to follow Roy Thomas’s conception of her as a Hyborian Age heroine, but as you know, we didn’t present her as the comic-book babe in the steel bikini through most of the novel series. As I recall, a female reviewer or two appreciated that.

Vallejo’s covers, of course, did present her as “the comic-book babe in the steel bikini”!

Movies

Brigitte Nielsen (far left) played Red Sonja in the 1985 film Red Sonja, which also starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as Kalidor (a Conan clone).

The film was directed by Richard Fleischer. It performed poorly at the box office. John Grant (The Encyclopedia of Fantasy) calls it, “a great embarrassment.”

Inevitably, there was a Marvel Comics adaptation.

Rose McGowan (far left) will play Red Sonja in a new film, also called Red Sonja, to be directed by Douglas Aarniokoski, slated for release in 2009.

TV

Angelica Bridges (left) played Red Sonja in an eponymous episode of the Conan TV series.

She is on a mission to rescue a young wizard who was kidnapped. When one of Conan’s partners sarcastically asks why the village didn’t send their best warriors, Sonja replies, “They did send their best warrior, mulebrain!”

FRPGs

Following on from its two Conan supplements, TSR published Advanced Dungeons & Dragons supplement RS1: Red Sonja Unconquered (1986) (right), illustrated by Clyde Caldwell.

Vincent Darlage published a description of Red Sonja for Third Edition D&D on his Conan D20 site .

Vincent also posted statistics for Red Sonja for the Conan RPG on Mongoose Publishing’s Conan forum .