Immortal Red Sonja #3 // Review
The she-devil with a sword now has a cursed sword. That's not all that's cursed. Her chainmail is talking to her. (It's okay; she's not going mad. She's just run into some bad luck, is all.) The bad luck continues to twist into strange fates for the crimson-haired warrior in Immortal Red Sonja #3. Writer Dan Abnett continues a bracing adventure story that is conjured to the page by the art team of Emiliana Pinna and Luca Colandrea with the aid of colorist Ellie Wright. The blend of action and light comedy has found a firm footing in three issues.
So she picked up a cursed sword. What could be the harm in that? It's not incredibly powerful and sentient or anything. It's not exactly...Stormbringer or anything like that. Granted, she's already run into something: The she-devil is already wearing cursed chainmail that she can't get off her body. And it doesn't seem to want to stop narrating the adventure, but y'know...it IS the spirit of King Arthur. (Sorta.) Maybe it might hold some wisdom as Sonja carves her way deeper into some forgotten destiny. She's on the hunt for the tower of the magician known as Merlyn. Naturally, she's going to run into some trouble on her journey.
Abnett has firmly established the tone and rhythm of the series. An encounter with hill ogres leads to an encounter with a couple of giant Magogs before the rush to the tower of Merlyn. Through it all, the chainmail continues to talk and narrate, though it never seems to be able to tell Sonja the more critical bits of information she needs. The basic elements fit together into an enjoyable adventure with plenty of action to keep everything moving while maintaining a sense of mystery. It's all very familiar without being entirely predictable. The wit of the dialogue between the warrior and her chainmail keeps the script from ever taking itself too seriously.
There isn't a great deal of detail in the art to weigh down the action. Pinna and Colandrea have a grand and sweeping sense of motion about the action. Their use of space delivers beautifully on the scale between the tiny warrior, her massive sword, and the enormous creatures she's going up against in the third issue. Wright's colors give a vivid sense of place in the snowy landscape of the adventure, but a lack of detail DOES keep the tower's interior from feeling quite as mysteriously cavernous as it could.
Abnett's got a solid handle on the unique tone and form of a series that skews a few traditional Arthurian tropes a bit. Sonja and the chainmail make for a fun pairing. The adventure feels fresh and sharp without bogging itself down in all of the tedious worldbuilding that many writers in the genre feel compelled to deaden the page with. Abnett and company put a few elements on the page and set them in beautiful motion. There's not much to it, but there doesn't have to be. It's fun.
