Sonja Reborn #1 // Review
Margaret Sutherland came to America to kill Skye Ramsey. She’s got a gun and everything. That’s not why the police officer stopped her, though. He stopped her for a routine check. Doesn’t have any idea that the reason why she came to the states was to kill. And she doesn’t have any idea that she’s going to be transported to another world of magic, adventure and peril in Sonja Reborn #1. Writer Christopher Priest opens a really intriguing shift on traditional fantasy tropes with artist Alessandro Miracolo and colorist Giovanni Caputo.
Mags was on the run when she dropped her gun. There was a blackout. When she woke-up she was wearing an armored bikini and carrying a sword that was a hell of a lot heavier than it looked. Now she’s forced to deal with things like riding horses and returning to a place filled with corpses made possible in part by the sword that she’s carrying around. Naturally she’s disgusted, but there’s good news: her body seemed to remember how to ride a horse and her mind seems to be remembering who it is that she’s working with.
The specific elements that Priest is working with have been done to death elsewhere, but Priest puts them together in an immensely appealing way that feels remarkably new. The idea of placing a perfectly ordinary present-day person in the body of an uber-powerful barbarian warrior is more fun than it has any right to be. All too often present day people are thrust into sword and sorcery fantasy as total strangers. It’s cool to see a perfectly ordinary person suddenly forced into the body of a legend and then force her to try to deal with the realities of life in a sword-and-sorcery European fantasy world.
There’s magic. There are corpses. There’s blood. Miracolo delivers all standard look and feel of a traditional Red Sonja story. The clever bit that he’s adding-in is the sense that it’s Mags inside the body of Sonja. The subtleties of the possession come across with texture and nuance. She’s got the abilities of some unrealistically powerful fantasy barbarian, but she’s carrying herself subtly like...a middle-management type working in the U.K. government. It’s clever characterization that only occasionally feels ridiculously amplified. It’s cool to see it come across the way that it does visually.
On one hand, it feels like a particularly bizarre episode of Quantum Leap. On another hand...Priest is definitely crafting some remarkably clever bits around the edge of the central plot. Of particular interest is the young barbarian companion Faolán, who has a quicker wit than is often afforded a minor supporting character. Actually...Priest is particularly deft in rendering peripheral characters that feel like they have a great deal of depth. The contemporary policeman at the beginning of the issue seems particularly sophisticated for a minor supporting character. It’s going to be interesting seeing this approach fuse with the sword and sorcery fantasy setting.
