Red Sonja: She-Devil with a Sword

Red Sonja: She-Devil with a Sword is a fictional character, a high fantasy sword and sorcery heroine created by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith. She first appeared in the Marvel Comics's Conan the Barbarian #23 (February 1973).

Red Sonja has become the archetypical example of the fantasy figure of a fierce and stunningly beautiful female barbarian who typically wears armor resembling a bikini or lingerie.

The character now appears monthly in her own series, Queen Sonja, as well as a series of mini-series and one-shots, all published by Dynamite Entertainment.

Origin

The origin story for Red Sonja, "The Day of the Sword", first appeared in Kull and the Barbarians #3 by Roy Thomas, Doug Moench, and Howard Chaykin, and was later redrawn by Dick Giordano and Terry Austin for The Savage Sword of Conan, issue 78.

In this story, Red Sonja lived with her family in a humble house in the Western Hyrkanian steppes (this seems to be in modern Ukraine/Russia though historical Hyrcania was on the borders of modern Iran/Turkmenistan). When she had just turned 17 years old, a group of mercenaries killed her family and burned down their house. Sonja survived but was brutally raped by the leader of the group, leaving her in shame. Answering her cry for revenge, the red goddess Scáthach appeared to her, and instilled in her incredible skill in the handling of swords and other weapons on the condition that she would never lie with a man unless he defeated her in fair combat.

In the current Dynamite comic book series, Sonja's origins are portrayed in "flashbacks" within each issue beginning with issue #8. The goddess makes her first appearance in the new series in issue #12, which also marks the return of the deadly sorcerer Kulan Gath.

Later during the series, the original character is killed off in issue #34. Instead, a new character of the same name, described as a reincarnation of the original Sonja, takes her place from issue #35 onward.

Revamped Sonja

In this new continuity, Sonja is described as a distant relative of the original Red Sonja, taking her name as a good omen, since Sonja had come to be known as the most beautiful and fearless woman in Hyrkania. A noblewoman, this incarnation lives a fairly sheltered existence, along with her sister Verona and her little niece, longing for a child of her own and waiting for the return of her distant husband, Lord Daniel.

Eventually she's reunited with her husband, but then a pirate crew (unbeknownst to them called upon by Verona's husband, Lord Lucan, in a bid for more power) slays him and leaves Sonja on the brink of death. Sonja is then nursed to health by Osin, in Sonja's previous life a bard companion and now a gruff swordsman, who accepted the curse of Claw the Unconquered for himself in exchange for the ability to locate, and train the new incarnation of Red Sonja.

Osin begins her training, finding that, even if Sonja has occasional flashes of her former reflexes, she no longer has access to the full might of the skills bestowed upon her by Scathach (now an almost forgotten goddess with waning powers) in her previous life, nor the fit body she once possessed, due to her sheltered life. Despite these handicaps Sonja is able to learn faster than presumed, but decides to act stealthily, joining Lucan's pirate crew to be closer to Daniel's assassins.

Prototypes: Red Sonja vs. Red Sonya

The character was loosely based on Red Sonya of Rogatino in Robert E. Howard's short story "The Shadow of the Vulture" (The Magic Carpet, January 1934), which Roy Thomas rewrote as a Conan story for Marvel Comics Conan the Barbarian #23 (1973). Thomas also somewhat based Red Sonja on another Howard character, Dark Agnes de Chastillon, a sword woman in 16th-century France.

Red Sonja is somewhat different from Robert E. Howard's original Red Sonya. Besides tweaking the spelling of her name, Thomas transformed her from a sword- and pistol-wielding supporting character of the late Renaissance into a sword-wielding heroine of Conan's prehistoric Hyborian Age.

Red Sonja: She-Devil with a Sword