After a brief hiatus we're back with one of my favorite issues, SSOC #23, guest-starring everybody's favorite she-devil with a sword, Red Sonja!First off--the cover, by Earl Norem--it's just gorgeous. Well designed, nice colors, exciting as hell. How anyone seeing this on the stands could've not bought it is beyond me.
The main story "Torrent of Doom", by Roy Thomas, John Buscema (Conan artist #1, IMO), and Alfredo Alcala, is actually the second part of a two-part story. Normally I would've seeked out the first part before I read this, but this issue looked like so much fun I went ahead anyway (and I was right).
It picks up with Conan stumbling across a group of demon-like zombies dragging a bunch of unconcious buccaneers away, into a mysterious city (aren't they all?). Conan, accompanied by a lovely wench (of course), follows them into the city to see what the Crom is going on.
Conan runs afoul of these zombie guys, and starts hacking into them with his broad-sword--a dozen pages or so of Buscema-style mayhem! It looks bad for our cimmerian pal until the Buccaneers wake up, itching for revenge, and help Conan turn a few hundred zombies into a thousand little chunks of zombies. They of course escape back onto the buccaneer's ship, setting sail for more adventure!
Next is a historical text piece called "Stygia, Serpent of the South" written by Robert Yaple with spot illustrations by Rick Hoberg, tracking Conan's movements through the Hyborian Age. Third is a Kull story, "The Striking of the Gong" by Thomas, Rock Hoberg, and Bill Wray, where Kull gets transported to a weird, alternate dimension(!).
Wendy Pini is next up with an article on Red Sonja, and she also draws a really nice pin-up page of her. More provocative are photos of Wendy and other Sonja fan Linda Behrle dressed up as Sonja! I had always heard Wendy made for an amazingly striking real-life Sonja, and these photos bear that out, but this Linda Behrle was no slouch either:
...I cannot imagine an actual human being actually trying to put that outfit on--talk about chafing. Ouch!
Next is "Wizards of the Black Sun", a Red Sonja tale by Thomas (again!) and the always-awesome Frank Thorne. To me, there was simply no Sonja artist anywhere near Thorne--his look doesn't look like anyone else's, in terms of storytelling and sheer draftsmanship. Sonja takes on evil wizards, living skeletons--lots of good blood-letting fun.
Of course, now that we've reached the end of the issue, we see that Conan and Sonja don't, in fact, team up to fight some giant evil octopus thingy. Oh well, maybe next issue...
1 comment:
Those outfits aren't nearly as bad as you'd think. Granted no one has the same Sonja costume. i get asked a lot when i am on stage " doesn't it hurt to wear that?" "how can you fight in that" and my all time favorite "is there anything under it?"
anyway great blog, you should check out my webpage i have a lot of Sonja pics past and present.
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