Immortal Red Sonja #6 // Review
A warrior finds herself in an unfamiliar realm. Now that she has a guide who has been there his whole life, one might expect things to get a little bit easier. They aren’t. Things have changed since Lanzlot knew the realm in question. Things aren’t likely to get any less dangerous in Immortal Red Sonja #6. Writer Dan Abnett continues his exploration into a twisted mutation of Arthurian legend with the aid of artist Luca Colandrea and colorist Ellie Wright. The art team follows Abnett into a strange banquet hall as an old threat returns in a generally fun adventure.
Lanzlot won’t be of much help without weapons of his own. Having nothing to his name would be fine if he was willing to steal something, but he IS a knight with a strict code of chivalry. So why is he robbing a grave? He assures Sonja that, having slain the grave’s occupant in battle, he is entitled to the late warrior’s arms and armor. Of course, things aren’t quite as Lanzlot remembers, and the occupant isn’t dead so much as...undead. If Sonja and Lanzlot can make it through the undead warrior, they will still have to face the threat of The Green Knight and a banquet hall full of half-mad old men who all claim to be the same guy. So things are going to get weird.
Abnett keeps the action moving. A series of three encounters fit nicely between the covers of a single issue. If they were all identical battles, it might get a little repetitious, but Abnett varies the action and adventure enough to keep it all feeling quite fresh from beginning to end. A room full of Merlins makes for some pleasant weirdness as Red Sonja journeys further into the strange Arthurian nightmare. The dialogue might not always feel all that crisp, but the situations that Sonja and Lanzlot find themselves in are more than interesting enough to carry the reader from cover to cover.
Abnett may manage to keep each encounter distinct, but a big part of keeping it feeling novel straight through the issue falls into the hands of Colandrea. It would be a challenge for any artist to keep each of the encounters from blurring into each other. This artist shows some talent for framing the action, but it DOES tend to lay a little flat on the page. The staging of each moment is satisfying enough to keep the intrepid sense of danger and adventure moving from panel to panel. Sonja remains charismatic with Colandrea’s pen, even if there isn’t anything particularly visually appealing about this specific incarnation of Lancelot.
Sonja has finally run into Merlin. (Several of them, in fact. Or at least...a room full of people claiming to be him. That’s a start.) The interview process of finding the right Merlin will be complicated a bit by the events at the end of the issue. The overall direction of the series may seem a bit compromised, but the weirdness of the situation is going to have little difficulty finding further readership next month.
