The Adventures of Red Sonja Omnibus - Part I

Date Completed: 17 Mar. 2025

Grade: C

A few caveats before I begin. Firstly, I did not intend on reading this Omnibus at two different times. However, as I was reading through it, I noticed that it essentially collected four trade paperbacks that Dynamite had published separately, and as I was nearing the end of the second of those two TPBs, I was getting a little bored. Having learned from previous experience, that if I get too bored I might fall off this push to read, I decided to just split this in two, and read the second half at the end of my next rotation.

My second caveat is that I wasn't planning on reading the Red Sonja books. I've been trying to prevent myself from expanding too far away from the Marvel Epic lines until I read through a bit more (and lord knows there are other books I'd like to try... but discipline is needed!). However, as I was reading through the classic Conan books, there was a crossover with Red Sonja's own title that I enjoyed, and the Red Sonja title could not be included because Marvel had lost the rights. So I decided, "What the heck?"

I'm genuinely not sure how I feel about these books. The stories are okay, but felt a little more Fantasy-esque than the Sword-and-Sorcery elements of Conan (I know that's hard to explain, but I guess its more medieval fantasy versus Conan's pre-bronze age feel). The Frank Thorne art seems good, particularly from the Marvel Feature books, but something about the colors feels off. Having never read these before, I do not know this for certain, and maybe it's my familiarity with Marvel's efforts to remaster their works that gives this a different feeling. Or perhaps Dynamite remaster the books themselves - I simply don't know, but there was at least one part of the book where the dialogue mentions Albino/white alligators, and yet the creatures were colored green. The size of the book is shorter than the Epics books, which isn't necessarily bad, but there is a lot of white space wasted at the top of each page, and the smaller pages meant the text is likewise a little smaller.

So far, Red Sonja is also not the character I had thought she would be. Before reading much of Conan, I had assumed she was just a female barbarian like Conan. However, her appearances in the Conan books painted a different picture of a stronger mercenary-type swordswoman, and so this is what I was expecting from her own book. So far, I think she has been portrayed more like my initial assumption. So, it's not bad, but it hasn't been too inspiring either. Hopefully the second part of the book will pick up and improve, but I'll find that out after reading some other Marvel Epics again.