Red Sonja New Year’s Special 2025 // Review
It’s the eve of the new moon. The she-devil with a sword is approached by a group of people from a nearby village who offer to buy her fermented spirits so that they can talk to her about a job that they would like her to do for them. They ARE offering to pay her for her services, so she agrees to help them out in Red Sonja New Year’s Special 2025. Writer Dan Panosian delivers a truly entertaining one-shot for the end of the year with artist Valeria Burzo. Color comes to the page courtesy of Valentina Pinto.
There was ale. Sonja agreed to help. It was a nice night, but Sonja DOES warn the villagers that the gold that they had promised should be every bit as pleasing as the night she had with them. There’s something rather strange about the trip out to the village. The villagers are clearly being hunted on their approach, yet they seem completely oblivious to the predators that are clearly surrounding their village. Evidently they have a deal with the big arctic cats that reside in the area. It’s not the cats that they’re worried about, though. They want Sonja to deal with the giants...
Panosian delivers a story with some very clever, twists and turns. It's a remarkably clever sword and sorcery adventure in three acts that gracefully moves its way across the page. Given how much goes on from one cover to the other, it's kind of remarkable that the raider managed to cram as much story in as he did. Every scene it seems to be perfectly waited to her resolve the conflicts that were introduced at the beginning of the prior scene while also introducing new conflicts that catapulted into the next scene. It's a very smooth adventure from beginning to end.
Burzo’s work has a deeply engaging chill about it. This is a New Year's celebration and so it is very much rooted in a feeling of winter. That feeling does amplify quite a bit of the atmosphere. Pinto’s colors maintain a solid sense of style about the action. There's just enough red to punctuate the grays and blacks and whites that are perfectly at home in winter. It's a very thoughtfully, curated color palette that the color is working with. Visually it's all quite stylish. And the execution of the action is more or less less perfect.
Yosemite Christmas and holiday specials clogging up the market. It's nice to see one that is distinctly aimed at the new year. And if you're gonna have a New Year's special than it really should be someone like Red Sonja. It's release roughly one week before New Year's is more or less perfect. It's a fun end to the new year for a fantasy hero who continues to be deeply appealing in a completely new one shot adventure that is a great way to round out of the year for any fan of fantasy. Fun stuff.
