The Return Of Red Sonja

The red-haired warrior with a red-hot temper is featured in a new ongoing series from Dynamite Entertainment with the release of Red Sonja #1 (DEC181072), which features a multitude of variant covers. Hear what the book’s creative team has to say about this new title which is scheduled to hit the comic shops next February!

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Dynamite Entertainment: Who is Red Sonja to you, and what is your creative approach to this series as a whole?

Mark Russell (Writer): To me, Sonja is the fantasy genre's heir to the great warrior queens of history, like Boudicca, Tomyris, and Deborah. And that's what I use to inform my approach to Red Sonja, giving her the same guile, mastery of strategy, and courage that defined these figures and their resistance to the most powerful empires in history. The goal being to tell a story that is richly imaginative, but at the same time, feels like it could have happened because, in some sense, it did.

Mirko Colak (Artist): Growing up, Conan was my favorite, until I saw the redheaded woman beside him, dressed like a warrior. Since then, I've followed Sonja's tales because she marked a formative period of my childhood. I want to show her as a gentle but deadly woman, capable of ruling in a male world.

Dearbhla Kelly (Colorist): I've always loved stories of fearless women, women who lead and women who fight - but I especially love the ones who are a bit messy and for me, that's right where Red Sonja falls. So my approach to this comic has been to paint something really rich and strong and textured like the she-devil herself, but with just enough mess to make things interesting, and bring to life all the dirt and dust and blood of the desert.

Hassan Ostmane-Elhaou (Letterer): Red Sonja is always about independence to me. Part of that is questioning the idea of authority and control, and how to liberate yourselves from it. So not just surviving but fighting. It's very exciting to see how the team is tapping to a lot of those same core values in this iteration. My approach is always to complement the art, in this case, the gorgeous fantasy linework of Colak and painterly approach of Kelly. I want the letters to be a little rough and ready, but still with that classic adventure-comic feel.