Red Sonja is the title of several Marvel Comics comic books starring the titular Red Sonja.
Red Sonja contains examples of the following tropes:
open/close all folders
In general
- Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: In What If? v2 #16, a crossover with Wolverine, Red Sonja is beaten by Wolverine and essentially gives up and waits for him to rape her, but he walks away, disgusted by the idea and saying "Sorry, darlin', that ain't my style." Sonja is both perplexed and slightly insulted, so she follows him. After their next meeting he warms up to her, and she eventually becomes his queen.
- Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me: Her first solo comic has this as the plot. King Ghannif offered her his "greatest treasure" and then said it was his bed. Oh and she had best comply or be put to death.
- Best Her to Bed Her: Introduced in this run and inspired by Roy Thomas being a fan of Greek mythology with things like the story of Atlantea.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Invoked — when Roy Thomas decided to create a Distaff Counterpart for Conan, he wanted to make her a redhead, as the established warrior women in Conan lore were Valeria (blonde) and Belit (Brunette).
- Breakout Character: Red Sonja rapidly rose to become one of the most popular characters in Marvel Comics in the Seventies, not just among Conan the Barbarian fans.
- The Cake Is a Lie: Due to the fact she's a woman, Sonja's employers frequently believe they can cheat her.
- Canon Foreigner: Red Sonja herself when she first entered the comics and now many individuals think that Robert E. Howard created her.
- Chainmail Bikini: Subverted in the earliest stories actually as she initially wore a metal cuirass.
- Combat Pragmatist: Sonja has no sense of honor in battle and uses whatever methods to win as she can from stealth to trickery.
- Crossover: Red Sonja would frequently have these with Conan the Barbarian in his own comic as well as made a couple of trips to the modern age where she hung with Spider-Man.
- Distaff Counterpart: Subverted actually. According to Word of God, Red Sonja was actually created as a counterpart to Belit and Valeria who were unusable for various continuity reasons.
- Dolled-Up Installment: Sonja's first appearance was an adaptation of Howard's non-Conan story The Shadow of the Vulture.
- Dramatic Irony: Roy Thomas was the creator of Red Sonja's infamous oath but had a lot of fun with it even in the earliest issues. One of these facts is the fact that Red Sonja is certainly attracted to men and desires them but she's not attracted to big burly hulks like Conan. She actually prefers soft pretty boys that could never defeat her in combat.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- Sonja's second appearance has her dancing on a tavern table to get Conan's attenton.
- Sonja's first outfit was chainmail that covered her front and hot pants. Roy Thomas said he found it weirder than the Chainmail Bikini.
- Enigmatic Empowering Entity: The "red goddess" Scathach (known as "The Lady" in some accounts) who grants Sonja her fighting skills in the Marvel Comics version of her origin.
- Fauns and Satyrs: Sonja slaughters a temple full of Always Chaotic Evil ones in her second solo story.
- I Have You Now, My Pretty: The very first solo story has Red Sonja dealing with this and King Ghannif.
- Mercy Kill: Sonja gives one of these to a Priest of Mitra that had been tortured horrifically by a bunch of satyrs.
- Only in It for the Money: Trollus seems to have Undying Loyalty to the late King Ghannif but it turns out he was only upset at losing his meal ticket.
- Royal Harem: Many of the rulers of this time keep these. Sonja often ends up trying to rescue the women of them or dumped in one of herself.
- The Tease: Amusingly, Red Sonja is this to Conan and deliberately baits him every chance she gets.
- Undying Loyalty: Trollus seems to possess this for Pasha Ghannif.
- War Elephants: In the 1970s Marvel run, Sonja allied herself with the young ruler of kingdom whose major military strength was its war mammoths.
- White-Haired Pretty Boy: Red Sonja's preferred type of man as seen with Dunkin, the only time she's actually oggling and regretting her oath.
Marvel Feature presents... Red Sonja
Red Sonja vol. 1
The Kull the Barbarian stories
The Savage Sword of Conan stories
Red Sonja vol. 2
Red Sonja vol. 3
Red Sonja: The Movie
Red Sonja: Scavenger Hunt
