Today, Drew and Patrick are discussing Red Sonja 2, originally released August 15th, 2013.

Drew: Finales get all the attention, but I firmly believe that starting a serialized narrative is the much more impressive feat. Each subsequent chapter can build upon the previous ones, but the very first entry must whip a meaningful relationship with the audience out of thin air. This often requires relying on character types that seem almost embarrassing when looked back upon, like bad yearbook pictures, or early blog posts. It’s a strange paradox; we like complex characters, but you can’t achieve that much complexity in 22 pages (or 42 minutes, as the case may be). Character types allow us to make connections with characters quickly, but at the expense of specificity — nobody is exclaiming “that’s so Raven” after the first episode of That’s so Raven. The handoff from those early, type-driven chapters to later, character-driven ones is perilous, but writer Gail Simone handle’s it beautifully in Red Sonja 2.

The issue picks up as Sonja and Dark Annisia, generals of warring nations, face off in hand-to-hand combat. Over the course of their battle, Annisia reveals that her guilt over all of the people she and Sonja killed while imprisoned together has manifested as ghostly visions which demand that she kill ever more people. This is pretty horrific, but not nearly as bad as Annisia’s two part follow-up — stabbing King Damath in the throat, and informing the entire town that they have the plague. Apparently, the war was a prophylactic measure, which Annisia is willing to forego on the condition that Sonja exile herself to the northern mountains. Oh, and Sonja has the plague, too.

With only a few moments with Annisia, Simone is remarkably able to surprise us with many of these reveals. Contrary to our assumptions last month, Annisia is not without compassion. We see this both in flashback, as she refuses to fight Sonja, and in the present day, where her own mercy to the infected mirrors Sonja’s treatment of the third robber from issue 1. It seems the only difference between Sonja and Annisia is Annisia’s visions, which may tip past compelling crazy into just straight bonkers territory. Her guilt over killing drives her to kill more? If you say so. Simone adds the strange detail that the Zamoran soldiers apparently have explicit orders not to kill — are they leaving them all for Annisia? Could it somehow matter that she personally be responsible for killing people?

Of course, Annisia’s madness may help explain away Sonja’s infection, if it ever comes to that. Obviously, some form of witchcraft isn’t off of the table for curing the plague, but what if the witchcraft actually comes in making Sonja think she has it in the first place. Annisia reveals Sonja’s infection by showing her her own splotchy reflection in the mirror, but nobody else had noticed that until now — indeed, the art does not reflect any symptoms before or after that reveal. Is Annisia as delusional here as she is about the ghosts? Maybe, but that wouldn’t fully explain why Sonja would be able to see it in that moment, too. Perhaps they’re even sharing Annisia’s madness?

Artist Walter Geovani builds to that moment beautifully, giving Annisia all kinds of crazy eyes right up until the moment she tells Sonja she has the plague, at which point, it turns to an all-too sane look of pity:

Giovani’s stelar acting and clarity of action find a beautiful match in colorist Adriano Lucas, who only enhances the sense of depth, subtly highlighting the main action. I find myself wishing he had less cleavage to carefully shade — and Sonja’s armor reveals its ineffectuality when Annisia stabs her in her exposed thigh — but the final page finds Sonja bundled up in furs, which I actually liked quite a bit. It’s just as useless in a fight, but is otherwise much more practical than the chain-mail bikini.

Patrick, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this series. It’s still very early to tell where this is going, but with this creative team at the helm, I’m happy to just be along for the ride. Are you as surprised as I was at how easily Simone slipped into “medieval warrior” voice?

Patrick: There aren’t many qualities of this book that don’t surprise me. Simone has a few hallmarks that she gleefully subverts throughout these two issues, and as much as I’ve grown to love her writing (which I’m going to take this opportunity to label as “cute, quippy, but fuck with me and shit gets dark FAST”), I find Red Sonja to be a welcome change of pace. It may be disorienting to read a Simone title that’s essentially devoid of jokes, but it’s incredible how she’s able to kind of amortize that charm over the entire issue — and it’s not even like the issue is light or silly or anything like that. It’s the kind of absurd intangible that we might just be projecting, but I’m convinced that Simone really cares about these characters, and that affection show through on every page. Of course, it helps that the medieval warrior writing is so damned beautiful; how can you argue with prose like this?

You are banished, Cursed One. Go walk your final walk, until the sickness takes you. Sonja is dead. You carry her corpse in every footstep. Get thee gone, Leper. Outcast. Shunned Woman. Get thee gone.

As a rule, I don’t generally like barbarian characters. Of the many warrior archetypes, that never one that rang any bells for me. Gallant Knight? Love it. Wandering Ronin? You bet. Wild West Lawman? Sign me up. There’s something about the big, dumb muscle-bound type that always had me checking out. They just seem like characters without guiding philosophies. It’s a bias I carry to this day, and indeed into my read of Red Sonja. I do read the character as more emotionally detached that I would normally like of heroines. But where this books sets itself apart, is that I think Simone knows that the other characters need to have principles that direct the action — characters like Annisia, for example.

Annisia, by all rights, should be the hero of our story. Drew’s right to say that it’s a little bit goofy that her guilt over killing so many people would drive her to KILL MORE, but there are so many complex emotions being expressed here. Annisia is a character that does what she needs to do in order to survive, but she feels remorse for the lives she’s taken. In fact, that wonderful flashback shows that Annisia is strongly principled – going so far as offer her own life to keep from killing any further.

Look at that remarkable black gulf between the characters during this moment. On the previous page, some clever staging lets Geovani draw the two women closer together, but the blank space between them here speaks volumes about their difference in perspective. Last month, we saw Sonja opt not to kill the band of robbers that set upon her, but she essentially came into that scenario from a position of power. Annisia abdicates her ability to kill at the moment when she is at her most powerless, and that’s such an interesting character trait, I can hardly stand it.

Which leads me to the question of how we’re supposed to feel about Sonja’s exile. For starters, Sonja was basically a fish-out-of-water when Ditmath’s archers brought her back to the city. Was she ever even interested in becoming a part of that society, or was she just happy to have a straightforward, fighty goal — like repelling an invading army — to occupy her time? Like, she was basically just getting drunk in self-imposed exile when we met her, right? I know the plague is no picnic, but other than that, this is just sort of returning Sonja to her status quo, right?

There’s a sweet, but still antagonistic, moment between Annisia and Sonja that I keep coming back to. Annisia has already won the battle and informed Sonja of her illness (whether the result of witchcraft or not will have to wait for future issues), when Annisia’s battlefield taunts slip into a slightly more sympathetic tone.

Annisia is essentially telling Sonja that she too will be haunted by those long dead, but Annisia presumes it will be a comfort — even though that’s not at all the relationship she has with the dead. Regardless, Annisia seems to relish the idea that Sonja will have to confront the souls of the people she’s murdered, through whatever means. Notice the contrast to the scene I posted above – instead of being separated by inky blackness, they are face to face, inches away from each other. Their perspective may not be aligned, but their experiences are.

For a complete list of what we’re reading, head on over to our Pull List page.  Whenever possible, buy your comics from your local mom and pop comic bookstore.  If you want to rock digital copies, head on over to Comixology and download issues there.  There’s no need to pirate, right?