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Red Sonja, "warrior woman out of majestic Hyrkania," is a fantasy sword and sorcery heroine created by Roy Thomas and first appearing in Conan the Barbarian #23 (Marvel Comics). She was loosely based on the character Red Sonya of Rogatino in Robert E. Howard's short story "The Shadow of the Vulture" (The Magic Carpet Magazine, January 1934), which was rewritten as a Conan story for the Marvel comic.
Howard vs. Marvel
Howard's Red Sonya was very different from Red Sonja: Thomas reinvented her, making her a heroine of Conan's Hyborian Age, tweaking the spelling of her name, and giving her a sword instead of her guns.
Red Sonja is a redheaded female warrior who had sworn an oath never to have sex with any man unless he had defeated her in personal combat.
She is most often depicted wearing a very brief bikini-like costume of chainmail (although this is usually fashioned from overlapping disks rather than interlaced rings!). As originally drawn by Barry Smith for "The Song of Red Sonja" in Conan the Barbarian issues 23 and 24 (1973), she did not have as full a figure and dressed a little more conservatively, in a chainmail t-shirt and cloth (maybe leather) shorts.
The "bikini" look is usually credited to Frank Thorne, but was created by John Buscema for Sonja's appearance in Conan the Barbarian issues 43 and 44 (1974), and used by Dick Giordano in the first issue of Marvel Features Presents Red Sonja (1975) before Thorne took over from issue 2 (1976). For some reason the "bikini" proved popular, becoming well-known through the paintings of Boris Vallejo and others.
Appearances
She made "guest appearances" in Conan the Barbarian and The Savage Sword of Conan as well as "starring" in her own comic series and several novels by David C. Smith and Richard L. Tierney:
- #1 The Ring of Ikribu (Ace 1981)
- #2 Demon Night (Ace 1982)
- #3 When Hell Laughs (Ace 1982)
- #4 Endithor's Daughter (Ace 1982)
- #5 Against the Prince of Hell (Ace 1983)
- #6 Star of Doom (Ace 1983)
She was played by Brigitte Nielsen in the 1985 film Red Sonja, which also starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as Kalidor (a Conan clone). The film was directed by Richard Fleischer. It performed poorly at the box office.
Vincent N. Darlage has published a D20 System description of Red Sonja on the D20 Conan website.
The She-Devil with a Sword has become the archetypical example of the fantasy figure of a fierce and stunningly beautiful female barbarian who typically wears sexy, but impractically skimpy armor.
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