She certainly looks less ... big & fleshy ... than in the '70s Marvel books ... She still has boobies here, but of a more realistic size, and contained in a way more conducive to athletic runnings about and monster slaying. I might say she looks less sexual, more warrior-like ... but then again she has a snake wrapped around her in the first pic, and in the other she's grasping a furry thing between her legs. Plus being mostly naked and all, but that seems to have been the norm in her day, what with Conan, etc. So maybe the sexuality is reduced a little in the reformulated Red Sonja, the serious warrior aspects, the hardness, and the violence increased. But I haven't read the new ones. Am I reading the character somewhat right, T?

Hi Jeffrey,

I get the feeling you're hesitant about the image. I showed the above image to my girlfriend and she immediately criticized the large breasts. She's much more unforgiving of comics' representation of women than me. I think I have a more conventional "male" response to images of women, which I guess is unconventional for a woman. Although the snake is traditionally interpreted as phallic, I have read some feminist analyses that claim this is a corruption of its original designation as a symbol of the vagina. Whether it's true or not, I don't know, but it could be seen that way, couldn't it? Representation is a slippery thing.

Actually, Red was concieved of by Howard as wearing boots, trousers, a chainmail hauberk, a sash for her sabre and a cape - and she wasn't a contemporary of Conan at all, but a kickass Renaissance Woman. It was the comics boys who decided to stick her a) in the Hyperborean Age and b) in a battle bikini, as apparently swashbuckling warrior princesses aren't sufficiently wankfodder.

I don't think I'm hesitant about the image. It's definitely different than she used to be, in a more realistic and less Venus-of-Willendorf, my-female-parts-would-weigh-me-down-in-real-life kind of way. Instead of 52FF, she looks like an athletic D-cup in a good chain-mail sports bra. The emphasis is on muscles more useful for fighting--arms & legs--instead of the fleshy, fatty hips & tits. In Camille Paglia's terms, she's moved from a Dionysian body-type to something much more Apollonian (or you could call it Artemisian I s'pose). She's no longer a "prisoner of nature." Except, she never was--she somehow moved that big, soft body just fine. The male comic artist's (and reader's) wet dream, I'm sure--I know she was mine. Now, she's more an individual, more a warrior, and that's perfect--what she should have been all along.

I have never heard of the snake representing a vagina, and I can't picture why it would really, unless it's the open mouth, a sort of vagina dentata ringed round with fangs. It makes sense to me on one level, though: The Uroboros, a snake eating its tail, is a representation of cyclical female nature. Does that play a part in it? Please tell me what I should read to learn about this.

Hi Jeffrey,

I asked my girlfriend for a book about the snake imagery since she is more familiar with this theory than I am. She suggested "When God Was A Woman" by Merlin Stone.

Hi bellatrys,

Thanks for the info about Red Sonja in the original works. I never knew any of that!

Hey, Teresa! Hope you're well.

I've become a bit obsessive over Sword and Sorcery the past few years so I was excited to see your post on Red Sonja. To add to bellatrys' comment, the original Red Sonya (with a 'y') only appeared in one story by Robert E. Howard that I know of. When Roy Thomas was adapting the Howard Conan stories into comic form he realized that he would eventually run out (there were only 21 Conan stories and a handful of story fragments left by Howard) and so he relied on non-Conan fantasy stories, both by Howard and by other pulp authors, to keep the comic going. It was less a matter of denying the 16th-Century Red Sonya her due as it was placing her in an already established format. As for the chainmail bikini, that wasn't her initial look. She started out with a full, long-sleeved chainmail shirt and red hot pants, which was just about as unflattering as you can imagine. Sonja adopted the chainmail bikini soon afterwards. The first trade paperback for the Dynamite Comics revival has sketches by artist Mel Rubi where he attempted to convince the publisher to give Sonja slightly more practical armour, but they decided to stay the course.