Red Sonja Attacks Mars #1 // Review
The She-Devil rides through the desert with an old wizard. They had just had a run-in with serpentine slavers and now they find themselves moving through vast shiftings sands beneath an oppressive sun. The bad news is that there’s a sandstorm coming. The good news is that they’ve found a structure stable enough to serve as shelter in Red Sonja Attacks Mars #1. Writer Jay Stephens and artist Fran Strukan are joined by colorist Miroslav Mrva in an opening of a whole new adventure for the she-devil with a sword. The fusion of campy, retro sci-fi with traditional sword and sorcery fantasy shows considerable promise.
The old sorcerer looks around inside the structure and instantly knows that they’re in danger. They have entered Kara-Sehr: the city of the dead. They would have had a better chance of survival in the sandstorm with the camels. Nevertheless, Sonja has dealt with this sort of thing before and she’s not even going to be phased when she finds out the nature of the structure having to do with ancient aliens from Mars. (She’s dealt with THEM before in the past as well.) She’s faced Martain before. This time they’re undead. How much different could that be?
After John Layman’s Mars Attacks Red Sonja from half a decade ago, it would make perfect sense to have Sonja return the favor for another mini-series entirely. The introduction to the series is set entirely on Earth...firmly establishing the decided hoeroic temperament that motivates Sonja in a fun, quick-moving ancient alien adventure that should really become quite interesting once it lands on Mars in April. As it is, the particularly heroic Sonja feels quite admirable as she launches herself on course to battle the Martians on the red sands of their home world.
Strukan takes Stephens’ script and focuses it quite squarely in the direction of the action. Sonja’s sprints and sword thrusts hit hte page with considerable intensity as she moves through atmospheric action in a small, lush village to the sands of a great desert to the sinister shadows of an ancient temple of dead aliens. It all moves quite efficiently across the page. Sonja maintains the pois, beauty and intensity that has made her such an appealing character over the course of the decades sice she was first introduced in the pages of Marvel’s Conan.
The character design of the Martians continues to hold considerable appeal. Burton’s film adaptation is so oerwhelmingly iconic and pleasantly weird that it’s difficult to see scenes featuring the beloved creatures without hearing the distinctly weird theremin of Elfman’s score and the adorably creepy “ack ack” of the Martians in question. It’s a fun mash-up between the two franchises that should be particularly interesting on Mars itself now that Sonja is setting herself in the direction of the red planet. The challenge is going to keep it grounded in the source material without making it all look kind of like...Burroughs’ sword-and-sandals version of Mars. WIth Sonja there, this could be a serious challenge.
