From Silverbulletcomics.com
With the success of Dark Horse’s Conan revival, it’s not surprising that Robert E. Howard’s Red Sonja is also making a comeback. While Howard originally created Red Sonja for a short story, creators like Roy Thomas, Barry Windsor-Smith and Frank Thorne developed her most popular incarnation at Marvel. And now, Dynamite Entertainment is set to launch the first Red Sonja ongoing series in almost 20 years. Recently, I had a chance to speak with the co-writers of the new series, Michael Oeming and Mike Carey:
Blair Marnell: How did you two end up together on this project?
Michael Oeming: I believe Carey was on board first, but didn’t know if he could do it- so Dynamite suggested he work with someone. It didn’t take long to discover that Carey and I working together was magic. I write with raw energy, Carey is full of depth and experience, we compliment each other nicely.
Mike Carey: I'm not sure of the exact sequence of events. I think it's possible that Michael and I were each sounded out separately first. I wasn't in a position where I could take it on by myself, in any case, and I guess Michael wasn't either. But when Dynamite raised the possibility of us co-writing it, I went for it very happily. I figured if we actually hit it off creatively, that would be a great way to do it - to spread the load. And as it turned out, Michael is one of the easiest guys to work with on the whole planet. It's great riffing ideas with him, and I think the partnership brings out the best in both of us.
MO: And we seem to get along great. What I like best is when I have an idea that I don’t know how to express, Carey can bring it to the surface and explore it.
www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/rage/images/050213/rs0pg4.jpg www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/rage/images/050213/rs0pg12.jpg BM: What's your take on Sonja? Who is she to you?
MC: I see her as someone who's scarred by her past and understands herself very badly - very imperfectly. Like Conan, she's not given to introspection. Unlike Conan, she's got this weight of trauma inside her, and I think it influences her actions in ways she doesn't understand because she doesn't question. She wants to be strong, but hates those who misuse their strength: she both pities and despises the weak, and maybe on some level even fears them because they remind her of her own past. She's a rich and strange character - very stark and simple on the surface, but with all her depths concealed.
MO: Yeah, she's driven by a childhood trauma and a mythical experience with an unnamed goddess. But she's no hero, I don’t think she does right for the sake of right as much as fighting evil puts her in that position. She hates power and the abuse of it.
BM: How does this Sonja relate to her previous incarnations?
MO: We look at Roy Thomas's work as the roots of Sonja, from which we are allowing ourselves to develop her as our own incarnation of her.
MC: I think we're filling in the gaps, to a large extent. Sonja has often been defined in terms of what she does, rather than what she is: there's lots of room to explore her character without treading on any past continuity. We launch off from what's already known about Sonja, and I think we draw in detail that wasn't there previously - but we do it with respect to the classic rendition of the character.
www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/rage/images/050213/redsonjacovercolorprelimadamhughes.jpg MO: This isn’t retcon, it’s growth.
BM: Does this series share any continuity with the previous series?
MO: Just the world, the Hyborian world, and any of Howard’s characters.
MC: Yes and no. The setting is the same, obviously: this is still "an age undreamed of", the Hyborian world of Conan, and Sonja is very much the Sonja we know from previous stories in the canon. We're not leaning hard on previous continuity, though, except that there may be some familiar faces cropping up here and there. Certainly there's no sense in which knowledge of Sonja's previous exploits is necessary to enjoy and understand this series. Long-standing readers will see some Easter eggs - it's more on that level.
BM: On this series, you’ve got Mel Rubi on art, with Richard Isanove and Caesar Rodriguez providing the colors. Tell us about their contributions to the book.
MO: The pages are amazing. They capture a perfect balance of commercial works and fantasy atmosphere. The colors are married to the story, tones reflect that.
MC: Mel has done a great job, I think, both in terms of handling Sonja as a character and in creating the right mood and feel for the world we've written. He's also created some very believable and compelling settings.
BM: What's the story about in the Zero issue?
MC: What we wanted to do here was to set up a short, free-standing incident - almost a self-contained scene - which would just encapsulate Sonja and her world. It's like the overture in a musical.
MO: It’s an intro to Sonja, and it ties in with the series without being dependent on it. We introduce not just Sonja, but some elements that become the theme of the series overall.
MC: Having said that, though, it's not quite as free-standing as it seems to be at first: there are threads running through which tie it to the larger arc that follows.
BM: Can you tell us about Sonja's supporting cast?
MO: There is a messenger, a priest, a set of warriors and a tribe of warrior men. None of whom are who they really seem to be. It takes a lot to hang with Sonja, she's not exactly friendly, so anyone who does can talk the talk and walk the walk. Osin is a character I based on the Celtic hero whom the Irish Osianic Cycles are based on. He's a great warrior, but nothing like Conan, we won’t be doing any Conan clones in Sonja, we have too much respect for Howard’s work as well as current DH book and ourselves to do something like that. We are playing with the ideas of race and xenophobia and how that effects cultural structure in Sonja's world.
BM: What are your plans for Sonja down the line in this series?
MO: There is a force that is imposing itself over the land slowly, what this force is and what it wants will slowly be revealed to us as Sonja's journey unfolds. Along the way is where we have the bulk of our stories.
MC: There's kind of an arc story that we're building up, where Sonja faces a number of unrelated threats and becomes aware in doing so that there's a larger crisis pending. Bear in mind, of course, that we're not portraying her as someone with straightforward, altruistic motives who would automatically see a situation like that as something that she should step into. But she *does* get involved, and unwillingly becomes a sort of bulwark between this evil and its objects.
Red Sonja # 0 hits in April, with the ongoing series following in June.
