Red Sonja: The Ballad of the Red Goddess - Roy Thomas, Esteban Maroto, and Santi Casas

Back in my comic book reading days, I was never a big fan of the character Red Sonja. Not really a Robert E. Howard character but more Howard-adjacent, let's say, she was very loosely based on the character Red Sonya in Howard's historical adventure yarn "The Shadow of the Vulture". So in reality she was actually created by scripter Roy Thomas and artist Barry Windsor-Smith, with her visual appearance being revamped early on by artist Esteban Maroto. Mind you, these are not bad things. Roy Thomas is one of my all-time favorite comics writers, and Maroto and Windsor-Smith are top-notch artists. But when Red Sonja got her own book, I read it only sporadically, and although I had copies of all six novels by David C. Smith and Richard Tierney that featured the character, I never got around to reading them before they were lost in the Fire of '08. These days copies of the novels tend to be pretty expensive, so I've never replaced them.

All that said, when I came across a digital version of the graphic novel RED SONJA: THE BALLAD OF THE RED GODDESS available on Kindle Unlimited, I didn't hesitate to download and read it. Maybe it was time to reevaluate the character, I told myself. And with a script by Roy Thomas and art by Esteban Maroto, the two guys who basically came up with the character, it seemed like a good bet whether it turned me into a Red Sonja fan or not.

The jury is still out on that, but I really enjoyed this graphic novel done originally for a Spanish publisher several years ago. Thomas's script is an origin story with a framing sequence. It covers ground that has been covered to a certain extent in previous stories but fleshes it out in an enjoyable fashion. The tale even provides a reasonable explanation for the infamous chain-mail bikini the character wears, over and above the idea of appealing to horny male comic book readers in the Seventies. (Hey! I resemble that remark!) The action is good, Sonja is a likable character, and while this doesn't break any new ground, it's a perfectly acceptable sword-and-sorcery yarn that entertained me quite a bit. Maroto's art is very good (I've always liked his work) and the art in the framing sequence by Santi Casas is good as well.

There are e-book editions of other Red Sonja collections that reprint the original comics run from the Seventies. Might be time to check them out, too.