'Red Sonja' - Get Ready For More Mayhem, Blood, Sex, and Red Hair!

When writer Gail Simone (Birds of Prey, Deadpool, and Wonder Woman) took over for Red Sonja in 2013, the ongoing series was met with high praise from both critics and fans. Now Simone has no plans of stopping as she continues her run with Dynamite Entertainment on the best-selling series of the red-haired sword and sorcery heroine.

Known also as the She-Devil With A Sword, Red Sonja made her way through books, movies, and comics with ease. Memorably played by Brigitte Nielsen in the 1980s cult classic, Red Sonja continues to swing and slash her sword with her current comic series. What was originally meant to be a six-issue run, Simone somehow stuck with her protagonist and took her to new adventures, with even bigger acclaim.

Simone explains her fondness for the red-haired protagonist, "I have always said that the thing that makes Red Sonja most dangerous is not her skill with a sword, or her speed. It's her cunning. Red Sonja is cunning. And she gets what she wants. When I first agreed to write Red Sonja, I wanted to do one great Sonja story and drop the mic (assuming of course that the story didn't suck and people instead started throwing things at me). So I wanted to do six issues."

Simone then explains how her extended run came about, "Then I started writing her, and she just got very controlling about it, frankly. I went from doing six issues to agreeing to twelve. I went from doing one Sonja book to two, adding the wonderful Legends of Red Sonja with some of my favorite female writers. Then I went from two Sonja books to three, in agreeing to do Conan vs. Red Sonja, I kinda got greedy. So Dynamite have generously kept me on for an extended tour of more issues of mayhem, blood, sex, and red hair, because Sonja is Sonja, and Sonja is hard to turn down. Because Sonja is cunning."

Readers should expect the upcoming Red Sonja #12 sometime in June. The ongoing will most likely meet with further high praise as Gail Simone continues her writing duties on the series.