Rock on, Red Sonja

Here is a thing I am ashamed to admit: my childhood exposure to comic books was some hideous version of a cartoon-serialized New Testament that our neighborhood church handed out. This is not to say that there might not be some awesome versions – and if Gene Yuen Lang was producing it, I’d be all over it – but I recall these comic books as flat out awful, and I hated them on sight. So. My knowledge of Red Sonja as a comic book heroine? Is nil – all I know of her comes from a stupid 80’s Schwarzenegger movie. And, since he’s, like, the poster boy for strong women, you can just bet that movie was awesome and full of win. Not.

Oddly, I don’t recall it as being all that awful, but keeping in mind that we watched it as part of Bad SciFi Night, I know it was truly wretched, just maybe not the worst of the heinous we’d ever seen in that film series. (And no, I won’t watch it again to make sure.) So, to hear that some of my favorite authors, as well as an awesome-by-heritage (meaning, I’ve never played her games – not that she isn’t awesome apart from her Daddy) game maker are involved in a 40th anniversary Red Sonja anthology is kind of interesting to me. Very, very interesting.

Marjorie M. Liu, Mercedes Lackey, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Rhianna Pratchett, Leah Moore, Tamora Pierce, Blair Butler, Nancy Collins, Meljean Brook, Nicola Scott, Devin Grayson and others unmentioned — what’s not to love in this list!? I’m so excited to see some familiar authors in the mix, and this female-centric writing cast is going to make Sonja more red, more rad, and more mad, bad, and dangerous to know, for real.

Although, if they keep her rocking that ridiculous bikini whilst wielding a scimitar, I am going to have Second Thoughts.

Hat tip to Mary Sue & Co.