Comic book heroes Red Sonja and Conan to meet again

They have met before, but fifteen years have gone by.

By popular demand, Dark Horse and Dynamite Comics will team up Conan the Barbarian with Red Sonja once more.  This is welcome news to many fans of the creations Robert E. Howard bequeathed to us, myself not excluded.  More critically, the comic book series will have the crackerjack writing team of Brian Wood and Gail Simone.  Both writers are not only considerable talents in the business, they are well seasoned in writing both characters.  What can we expect other than a sword and sorcery epic?  As Simone puts it:

"It's just a sword-and-sorcery dream come true.  It's sword vs. sword, Cimmerian vs. Hyrkanian, loincloth vs. bikini, and it'll probably be the most fun you'll have reading a comic all year."

Indeed.  I have been able to catch an issue or two of Wood's Conan series and I must say it's most well done.  In fact, only money has kept me from acquiring the trades.  So given the writing team and the iconic characters, this one's pretty much a gimmee in my opinion.  After all, there's just no going wrong with Conan.  Even the old Marvel Comics series is enjoyable.

What can we expect story-wise from the crossover?  In the interview linked above, both writers are rather mum on both the tale and its supporting cast.  What they did express was an urgent desire to avoid the pitfalls of a crossover (a lot of that apprehension going around Dark Horse and Dynamite lately) as well as keeping the story fresh for the times and holding on to newly acquired readers.  In one especially encouraging moment, Simone said:

"I think we've come up with a killer story. It's not just some dark wizard has an enchanted golden codpiece or whatever, it's actually meaningful, and that means Conan and Sonja actually have to think about something other than themselves. And they're not used to that, they don't take to it naturally."

I'll hack and slash to that.





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