Red Sonja Attacks Mars #3 // Review
The old man is being reassured that his assistance is not needed. His life debt to the she-devil has been paid-off many times over. He need not accompany her into the danger that awaits in the north. He is reluctant to leave her as she is in need of his help in Red Sonja Attacks Mars #3. Writer Jay Stephens and artist Fran Strukan continue their journeys with Sonja on Mars. Color comes to the page courtesy of Miroslav Mrva. The action feels relatively well-modulated as both of the franchises involved in the mash-up get a respectable amount of time on the page.
Meanwhile, there’s a Martian Science Bureau employee who is meeting with certain Martians in power. They have had more dealings with the “savage planet” of Earth. They would rather not have anything to do with it at all. And yet...the Science Bureau employee in question has it on very good authority that things on the Earth are in a state of disarray. The planet of Earth must be dealt with in one way or another, but the Emperor of Mars is unlikely to want to listen to any serious concerns on the matter.
The heroes come across sympathetically. So do the villains. So much of the plots seems to be wrapped up in politics. But there's enough beyond the politics to keep it moving as an adventure fiction. There is interesting complexity, going with respect to the overall timeline of Mars Attacks! and the nature of Martian dealings with the Earth that suggest a kind of military morass for the Martians that mirrors U.S. imperialism in various ways. Not that there’s a whole lot of satire going on in the book, but it’s nice to have bit more weight to the overall story than a traditional pulpy fantasy adventure.
Strukan’s overall layout is quite good. There is an immersive-ness to what she is putting to the page that seems very freshly atmospheric. However, the heaviness of the incident that the artist is using has a tendency to blur the atmosphere that's there. While the angles and the impact and the overall kinetics of the action are put to the page in clear fashion, the lack of finer detail muddles the visuals a bit. The color work of Mrva does much to add a respectable sense of depth to the visuals.
It's not a bad continuation of what's come before it. However, there's a lot that could be theoretically done with a mashup of this sort hasn't been explored in the issues that, so far. There's a lot of potential in pulpy sci-fi aliens with ray guns running into an invincible barbarian warrior that simply doesn’t make the page the way that it could. As a fun action, adventure story it's not bad. It's the fact that it's trying to take itself a little too seriously around the edges that makes it very difficult to enjoy quite so completely.
