I’m really interested in the overall concept of the Legenderry line.  Take an interesting genre and bend your characters around the genre to create something fresh while using older concepts.  Red Sonja and Vampirella are pretty old concepts.  Red Sonja alone has been around 42 years, so there’s a lot of history surrounding that character.  While Legenderry Vampirella did something kind of new while retaining the essence of the character, Red Sonja tries to dispose of most of the character while keeping just the broadest description of Red Sonja.  She’s a red-haired woman in chainmail you say?  Alright, here you go. Traditionally Red Sonja is a strong, taciturn, self-reliant and very principled woman.  In the comics she’s essentially a man with boobs.  There is very little that separates Red Sonja from her burly Cimmerian counterpart Conan.  They are essentially the same character but Red Sonja is easier on the eyes.

Here they have made the bold decision to get rid of all that and make Red Sonja even more one-dimensional along with adding kind of a ditzy quality and a sex obsession.  Seriously, the first several pages are more dedicated to her talking about how she’s sick of screwing her crew and is instead looking to get some strange from the city and it doesn’t get much better from there.

I’m not really impressed by the characters, the writing isn’t very inspiring but the setting still really appeals to me and the art is attractive.  There’s a lot of potential in seeing how these characters come together in this world.  I’m interested in seeing how Red Sonja will interact with Vampirella and next week Green Hornet enters this world which adds even more interest.  I don’t think these characters have ever come together like they could in this setting which is something exciting to me.  We’ll have to see how the world continues to build and see if this series picks up or other series come in to carry this one.  I could see this character working better as a cameo but I don’t think the character, as they are on the page, can carry a book.

Score: 2/5

Writer: Marc Andreyko Artist: Aneke Colorist: Impacto Studios Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment Price: $3.99 Release Date: 2/11/15 Format: Ongoing; Print/Digital