After Sonjaversal and The Invincible Red Sonjaand the announcement of Hannah John-Kamen (Star Wars, The Dark Crystal, Marvel, Game of Thrones,Tomb Raider) cast as the next live-action movie Sonja, the big year of Red Sonja continues. With her 50th anniversary arriving in 2023, now we have a new anthology series from Dynamite Entertainment beginning next week. Red Sonja: Black White Red combines three pairs of well-known writers and artists with a final book published in classic black and white with a touch of red–sometimes for Sonja’s flaming red hair, and just as often for the blood of her enemies.
A cyborg Red Sonja? Red Sonja with a gun? A Sonja multiverse? “Purple Sonja?”
One Sonja to rule them all–into the Sonjaverse. What Dynamite Comics bills as “the most important comic book to ever come out in the history of the world” is at a minimum likely to become the publisher’s biggest book of the year. Some ideas are “money” and that is true for a story of Red Sonja in her own multiverse. It’s coming the first Wednesday in February with the arrival of the first issue of Sonjaversal, a new, awesome, action book full of all kinds of fun. An evil force is punishing parallel world versions of Sonja by forcing each Sonja to kill the other. Who will stop the madness before there is only one Sonja left standing?
Ash Williams–our favorite cyborg horror hero is back, this time in a comic book series with the laughs and tone of the great Ash vs. Evil Dead television series starring Bruce Campbell. Get ready for Death to the Army of Darkness, written by Ryan Parrott (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Batman: Gates of Gotham) and artist Jacob Edgar (Savage Tales: Red Sonja), with colorist Kike J. Díaz (Sherlock Frankenstein, Ether) and letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (Red Sonja, Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt). These creators take us to Ash six months after the events of Army of Darkness–the sequel to the Evil Deadmovies. Ash just wants left alone, but deadite-possessed people keep pulling him back in.
Enter magic, the kind of magic that will make you wish this story was the next to hit the small or big screen. A bad reading of the Necronomicon book of the dead and Ash is splintered into multiple differing clones, each packing the same over-the-top personality to become Team Ash: familiar Bruce Campbell Ash, his feminine side Ashley, a tiny Ash demon, a cynical skeleton, a dog Ash aka Dash, and his now-sentient chainsaw, Chainy. Each issue reads like a half-hour episode of Ash vs Evil Dead. In the first issue you catch up with Ash, and it gets even better in the second issue as all of Ash’s better halves get to know each other, and some time travel to ancient Egypt is in store.
So many great covers are available for this series, you may lose track, but we’re previewing covers for the first four issues below (including a cut-out mask cover, and some incentive covers without logos), plus the first pages of the first issue, and an artist design sheet for Team Ash. Artists Ben Oliver, Arthur Suydam, Mirka Andolfo, Sebastian Piriz, Sergio Davila, and J. Scott Campbell all created variant covers for this unique series.
Heroes of the past unite for a third time under Dynamite Entertainment management, as the trade paperback edition of The Lone Ranger: The Devil’s Rope hits the stands this week. It’s 1887 in rural Texas, and wealthy landowners who have pressed Indian interests off their native lands are now doing the same for the farmer and rancher. Their method? Illegally taking lands and establishing boundaries with barbed wire, while influencing political interests to allow the illegitimate squatters to shoot to kill if anyone cuts the wire on “their” lands. Sounds like a good time for a hero.
Enter The Lone Ranger, disturbed at lunch by a stampede caused by the first shots in the conflict. The first murder is an excuse to enlist another hero from his past, Tonto, to help him confront the heavy tide of “progress.” Writer Mark Russell(The Snagglepuss Chronicles, The Flintstones) incorporates an innovative technological marvel to build a simple, classic Western tale of frontier America. Equal to the writing is the artwork by the artist known as Bob Q, whose simplicity echoes the barren landscapes his characters are fighting to protect. The artist’s best feat is the expressions of his characters. Black hat villains are easy to hate, and provide fodder for some sporting Texas Ranger justice by the original dynamic duo. Lettering is provided by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou.
You won’t find a lot of bold vision or layered storytelling here compared to past stories of The Lone Ranger, but you will find a good, easy read, reflecting plenty of truths of the robber baron era, the struggle of Americans to build a nation, and pulp and cinema heroes who never grow old. Readers of recent Jonah Hex and Zorro stories will likely enjoy the style and story in this book. It also has bits of action and villains like you’ve met before in 3:10 to Yuma, The Magnificent Seven, and Django Unchained.
Here is a 12-page preview of the 138-page trade edition of The Lone Ranger: The Devil’s Rope, courtesy of Dynamite Entertainment:
