UNBREAKABLE RED SONJA #1, from Dynamite Comics on October 5th, 2022, begins a new adventure as a thief tampers with the boundaries of time, creating double trouble for the She-Devil with a Sword.
The Details
- Written by: Jim Zub
- Art by: Giovanni Valletta
- Colors by: Francesco Segala, Agnese Pozza
- Letters by: Carlos M. Mangual
- Cover art by: Lucio Parrillo (cover A)
- Cover price: $3.99
- Release date: October 5, 2022
Is It Good?
2022 is shaping up to be the year where Red Sonja explores her motherly instincts by getting paired with a rambunctious scamp to make her life more complicated. This time, Red Sonja isn’t saddled with some wayward orphan. She gets to caretake a little girl with a much more personal connection.
The highlight of Zub’s turn on the Red Sonja franchise is the unique, science fiction element introduced to challenge our titular hero. Time displacement can be a tricky business in storytelling, but Zub wisely chooses to use the time magic to remove or bring forth items that don’t belong in the present. By focusing on displaced people and things, Zub’s story adds the benefit of time travel shenanigans in a fantasy setting without the complicated aspects of maintaining a timeline.
The plot centers around a thief and her gang who rob an ancient cave with time magic at the heart of the cave’s most valuable treasure. When the thief disrupts the natural order, time shenanigans ensue. The setup makes sense, the dialog and narration fit comfortably in a Red Sonja story, the pacing is good, and the twist cliffhanger (while obvious from the cover) is a pleasant “oh, snap!” moment.
Valletta’s art is decent average to above average in this issue. Closeup panels have plenty of detail and expressiveness, but the establishing shot panels lack detail. Admittedly, the closeups are the higher impact moments, but it would serve the comic better to have equal levels of detail on all panels. In short, the art is delivered with mixed amounts of detail, but the average is good enough to get the job done.
Keep scrolling for a closer look at the covers, or Click Here to jump right to the story description with some spoilers.
What’s It About?
[SPOILERS AHEAD – Click here if you just want the score without spoilers]
We begin with a firelit cave where a woman holding a glowing staff approaches the cave’s inner chamber to claim an unusual treasure. She orders one of her lackeys to break down the marble-smooth wall of the inner chamber when suddenly the lackey’s hand suddenly disappears in a razor-thin moment of pain.
The wall isn’t a wall but a border of ever-shifting sand trapped in a moment in time. Merely touching the wall displaced the lackey’s hand out of the present moment, forever lost in time. The woman’s magic staff, however, has the power to part the sands and gain the group entry to the inner sanctum and the prize within.
Elsewhere, Red Sonja is enjoying a night of drunken debauchery as she staves off would-be lovers and thieves. As she stumbles down an alley, Sonja encounters an oracle who offers to read her fortune. When the oracle asks Sonja to think about the person who trained her, Sonja is disturbed to realize she can’t clearly remember her old mentor’s face. Chalking the memory lapse up to too much mead, Sonja finds a quiet spot to sleep it off.
We conclude the issue with another thief, clever evasion, sudden monster appearances, and shocking introductions.
Keep scrolling for a closer look at preview images of the internal pages, or Click Here to jump right to the score.
Final Thoughts
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UNBREAKABLE RED SONJA #1 is a solid start to a Red Sonja adventure with a unique, science-fiction twist to keep things interesting. The plotting, pacing, dialog, and narration are all on-point, but the art is delivered with varying degrees of detail.
Related Information
Who owns Red Sonya?
The rights to license Red Sonja for adaptation are owned by Luke Lieberman, president of Red Sonja LLC.
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