Is it really that hard just to make her Conan but a hot redhead?
Yeah it is. Not because the task is hard but because the women in the office will stop you
>>156105350This has an obvious solution.
>>156105413Not an actionable one
>>156105436Then make it one.
>>156105350Yet they'll commission artists and cosplayers to do tittilating depictions of Red Sonja on the cover. They're like halfway there, they just need to actually put effort into Sonja's travels and why she gets into conflict with anyone (and get rid of the pedantic man-hating shit). Mind you, not every Sonja writer puts in random feminist shit, but it happens sometimes.
>>156105327She's had comics for decades. They just can't compare to Conan. And sometimes they even try to copy to Conan and even that isn't as good. The only advantage she has is that she's hot but even that's hindered by her "only a man that bests her can bed her" rule and when Simone did a run where that wasn't a thing and she was horny as fuck, nobody liked it. So at her best she'll always be a Conan with boobs that's a shadow of her male counterpart.
>>156105327Conan has a wealth of source material backing him and establishing who he is. The thing with Sonja is, that metal bikini aside, she really just isn't that interesting a character. Her personality seems to change on a whim. She ranges from perpetually angry tigress to glib modern cadence depending on who's writing. Conan comics aren't all equal but Conan has frame work.
>>156105453>they just need to actually put effortThere's the real issue. How is it the case that aex positive skut walk feminists hate sexuallized female characters? How can they say of models are empowered and call a cartoon in a bikini explotive at the same time?The answer is sincerity. They can smell it even though they can't describe it or tell you what it is they're noticing, but they definetely notice it and they hate it. Once you're trying hard it makes them mad, and the particulars are just excuses to attack you.
>>156105540Most iterations of her exist in the Hyborian Age, no? As in, she literally lives in Conan's world? Shouldn't be an issue in that case.
>>156105327Because the specific demographic of Frazetta/Bisley/pulp fantasy etc nerds is extinctEveryone now is either a Tumblr fandom Millenial/Zoomer into cutesy characters or "diet Anime" or an MCU Funko Pop guy
>>156105634That anon is talking about her character and personality, not the world around her.
>>156105327because she's the nortubel of fantasy
>>156105634The thing is the people who have the Sonja license don't have the Conan license. So for all intents she lives in the Hyborian age, she's Hyrkanian herself but they really do dance around a lot of the more legally distinct aspects of it. And even with that, that's the world. Not her character.
>>156105725New Conan is still selling well. I think it just comes down to actual quality.
>>156105752I don't see how those things stop her from essentially just being female conan. She already is, the writing just never actually reaches Conan quality.
>>156105327Sonja just isn't an interesting character and Dynamite is a mediocre publisher
>>156106586>DynamiteThere's the actual problem. When are her and Vampirella going to be from that shitty company?
>>156106609*free fromAh well.
>>156105327These stories need a lot more sex and gore.
Saved ya baby
>>156106501Look at superhero comics. There are plenty of characters that are like the more popular original but they're rarely as popular. Conan has decades of strong runs and iconic stories from books, many of which have been adapted multiple times into comics. Red Sonja doesn't really have that.
>>156108287Sooooo...you're just agreeing with me that writing is the problem?And I mean, the OP already brought that up. So, what the fuck is the solution? Because it really does seem Dynamite has no idea what to do with her.
>>156108478Get actual passionate artists on her books, for one. Conan became what it was in comics because of John Buscema on pencils. Sonja really needs some of that. Then, literally just copy Conan wandering into random places for Sonja—build the atmosphere, chew the scenery, all that. Make Sonja actually seem foreign—give her the pomp of someone with immense strength, and that slight sass of a warrior woman. Boom, it's perfect all of a sudden. Extra points if she's more meaty and muscular and scarred like OP image.
>>156108478That anon from earlier was talking about her character and you can say that's also about the writing but it doesn't address the problem that Conan is just a more interesting character compared to her. And that goes for the Conan clones. Conan has it all. Red Sonja doesn't. Other barbarians don't. That's why he's so popular. He-Man is also popular and a similar case of comparing She-Ra to him.If you want to make someone like Red Sonja more popular then you have to make something that really good that doesn't rely on her being hot but not denying the eye candy. But with any character that's easier said than done. Many have tried.
>>156109007>Her characterThis anon >>156108917 already described a perfect Sonja, imo. Saying hers is somehow worse to Conan's is just feelings. It's an incel opinion.
>>156109242It doesn't sound like you've ever really read Conan very much. He's not just the wanderer who shows up and looks at stuff.
>>156109349I definitely have. What would you describe that he does, in your own words?
>>156109242Red Sonja has a chance to be a better character but it hasn't really happened yet. OP was asking why she's not as popular as Conan and that's the reason. Conan is just so much more interesting and has the stories to back him up. I like the idea of Red Sonja but she hasn't hit that same level yet. I'm also thinking about Xena and Hercules, where Xena became more popular and that was because she was more fun as a character with a better cast. And the best thing was that she was her own character with her own powers.
>>156109387He grows. He lives. He has love. Sorrow. He is quick to risk his own life but grows sober with authority. He seeks adventure for adventure's sake. He laughs and is philosophical. >>156109490>Red Sonja has a chance to be a better characterNo she doesn't. No chance in hell anyone is coming close to the REH foundation Conan has.
>>156109510>No she doesn't. No chance in hell anyone is coming close to the REH foundation Conan has.I meant she could be a better character on her own. I'm not saying she can be better than Conan. As I've said he has decades of better stories.
>>156109510And in both the books and comics, he does all this as a wanderer, up until he becomes King. In the comics (specifically Savage Sword, the most popular runs), he is essentially a wanderer. I'm not talking about his book characterization, nor really his main marvel run. His Savage Sword version was his most popular series aside from the books. I want Sonja to have her own Savage Sword adventures with that level of John Buscema art—that's what made the comics special.
>>156105350fpbp
>>156109490I agree Sonja can be much, much better. But I just don't know why anyone is getting hung up on Conan. Sonja can be like Conan, and she essentially is a riff on Conan. Him having history she doesn't is irrelevant. I think at the end of the day, most of us just want her to be good LIKE Conan, not be a stand-in for him.
>>156105413Make her trans to appeal to both the wokies and the futa fetishists?Braga from Rat Queens could have been an interesting concept in the hands of a better writer and an artist that made him/her actually look sexy
>>156109720Sonja being like Conan is never going to work for her. Conan and his stories are so much cooler. Red Sonja needs her own thing to stand out from him.
>>156109780I think I'd much rather read about a redhead with fat tits chopping off heads then the caveman angle.
Audiences just don't care about a female Conan and they never will. They already have Conan.
>>156109827Does Conan have fat tits?
>>156109813If you honestly think Conan is nothing more than a caveman then you need to stop posting in this thread and go actually read the material you're trying to discuss like you know it.
>>156109834>fat titsSonja has a modestly sized bust in the majority of her comic appearances so you clearly don't read those either.
>>156109840Uh-oh, anon is getting angy that his wittle caveman is getting attwacked. AaaaawsadfaceI also think they should make Conan gay.
>>156109780I don't believe that. I think Sonja can work, with tweaks. I don't think she has to be wildly different.
>>156109861At this point you'd have made an entirely new character. You might as well just go read Jirel of Joiry. Sonja has a trademark outfit and look but beyond that there's not really a person. YOU CAN make decent stories with her but nobody seems all that much interested in curating her identity. So you'll get a story where she fights a sassy sultan and then all of a sudden you're going to read something where she fights ACTUAL ALIENS WITH LASER SWORDS. Sonja, as written, is just "whatever" the character. She's generic fantasy heroine with a vaguely fantasy image.
>>156110028So, because she's written so many different ways, you're suggesting a writer can't come along and make something seminal for her? I think with Sonja, the concept is fine, it just comes down to nailing a sword and sorcery vision for her. She's a cult character for a reason—there's been an audience since the 70s.
>>156110062No. Point is simply that, as of yet, nobody has. ANY character has potential but that doesn't mean a lot till the writing is there. Sonja as she is presently is not a terribly interesting character. And if you, or anyone else, wants to make her one then I wish you all the luck in the world but that's not the present case.
>>156110095>Not terribly interesting>as of yet, nobody hasYou've never read any Sonja pre Simone, have you? Roy Thomas perhaps? Micheal Oeming?
>>156110144They're fine but they're no Conan. Her book only lasted a bit over a dozen issues for a reason.
>>156110176>they're no ConanRoy Thomas wrote her and created her in Savage Sword of Conan. She started as a Conan character.
>>156110193... you're a special kind of illiterate. If someone says Y is no X then they are implying that Y is not on the same level of quality as X not that Y is not from the same series as X.
>>156110210Nice save, bro. I believe you.
>>156110210So, how does that change what I wrote? You're saying it's not Conan quality...but she literally originated from one of most lauded Conan series ever. lmao
>>156105327The entertainment industry (including comics) hates making stuff that explicitly panders to boys and young men. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z_AoSRZi7I
>>156110176Sonja's longest run was 81 issues. Holy fucking cornball. You make Conan fans look bad.
>>156105350Letting women in men's hobbies was a mistake.
This is a bizarro world thread for me because, in the little bubble I live in, Red Sonja has been way more relevant than Conan and had way more characterization. Ive hardly seen Conan depicted as more than a dumb step above caveman and Sonja automatically has infinitely more nuance than that. Her stories are also way more interesting than Conans.
>>156105593>Once you're trying hard it makes them mad, and the particulars are just excuses to attack you.Wonderfully articulated, anon.
>>156105593Makes sense why Vampirella and Red Sonja essentially get memory holed then.
>>156105593Your touching on something but its not the whole issue.What your missing is that women have known for a long time that their major source of social power is their bodies and by extension sexuality. Because of this the game for feminist women since de Beauvoir published The Second Sex has been to wrestle away any power or authority over the shared space of sexuality from men, and to defang or shame depictions of sexuality they personally enjoy or benefit from but are not the primary audience for as part of that.Sincere embracing of beautiful women especially in regards to other women doing it sets a standard they need to then try and reach for to achieve that sexual authority when the goal is to lower that standard even if its at odds with their own desires.
>>156110342The "original" comics are kind of instructive here. Conan's nuance comes from his genuinely principled actions. Conan doesn't rape, never has to really, he's generally not moved by things but is often sympathetic to people in bad spots and doesn't like to impose upon them even if he is not a hero and won't save people except in an emergency. Typical "tough, by your own bootstraps" type dude.Sonja is introduced as being wily-er and less principled, as is common for most of the people Conan forms temporary alliances too. They're usually quicker to let their greed blind them to dangers too. But when Sonja got her own comics, she didn't have to inhabit that role anymore and they differentiated her by, somewhat stereo-typically, making her more sympathetic to animals and children. I tend to remember that more than her specific stories. They also, earlier on, tended to have her be a bit more "susceptible" to seduction in a way I don't think they ever did for Conan. Even as a, relative, young man, Conan always had kind of a streak of cynicism that kept him from being taken in. A woman could use seduction to draw him into a bad spot, but Conan was rarely personally broken-hearted about it. He'd be pissed off and find a way out, but Sonja would tend to "fall" for it a bit more (there was a time a magic amulet demon was trying to steal her life force through sexy dreams and corrupting her, then there was a time she almost settled down with a nobleman before he revealed himself to be a total wimp). Those kind of "near misses" never really happened to him, distrustful and surly as he always was.Haven't really read some of the recent issues to see how they play her nowadays.
Doesn’t sound like anyone here is reading the current run, which is really good. All the naysayers, what was the last Sonja comic you read? The only writer who really failed at Sonja was Simone and that is mainly because she wrote Sonja as Conan with a vulva
>>156111904Can you speak more about this?
>>156105327Her comic concept was never good, she started as a girl that was raped and became a girlboss and within years she changed between being a horny girlboss or a basic girlboss. The end.Conan seeks a kingdom, original Red Sonja had a sultan to kill and friends, barbarian Sonja feels she's going to be stuck eternally angry with the world without any objective and she's hard to like for forever adventures. Maybe it could work as some Legend of Zelda jumping from barbarian red head on chain mail bikini to barbarian red head on chain mail bikini getting revenge against the villain of their times.
>>156106609>>156106631Sonja is a licensed property, but Vampirella is fully owned by them.
>>156113161I don't think it's all that "hard" to have her just be adventuring forever, you just gotta have fun adventures. Something Conan had plenty of, even if very little had anything to do with his "dream" of becoming a King.There's other angles you can play too. The original Shadow of the Vulture story, a historical fiction account of the Seige of Vienna, that Sonja is cribbed from has the weird wrinkle of her being the fictional sister of the historically fascinating Roxelana, slave girl cum concubine cum sole wife of Suleiman the Magnificent. It's incredibly strange this aspect of the original story never got cribbed itself, and easily allows for a stark contrast between two sisters, alike in their drive and force of personality, but different in how one wants little more than a life of violence and adventure, while the other sought power in the height of civilization. It allows Sonja to drift in and out of court politics as needed for a story and provides an obvious spring board to explore the distinctions between what she wants out of life versus her sister (and implicitly Conan, as her sister would've largely achieved the female version of Conan's desire for a kingdom).The hard part is actually writing well, which goes for any idea you could come up with. Conan's deal is no more intrinsically interesting, as proven by how fascinating his stories still are versus all his pedestrian imitators of the ways in which people casually wave him away in ignorance of the content of the actual stories.
Mark Russel's run was really fun.
>>156113161Under many writers, she’s the avatar of a goddess and a paladin of sorts. What makes her a girlboss, that she’s female and tough?
>>156113421One of the best ever. He added in a load of Eastern philosophy and was influenced by real life ancient history
>>156105327a core of adventure stories and the kind of people who liked them is that niggling back at the mind realization that you genuinely dislike a lot of the people around you and ostensibly ruling you but have little idea what to really do about it. a lot of making adventure stories is figuring out this little bit of discontent enough to ease people into realizing it because just being able to set off at all gets a lot of the darker ways to approach it nipped in the bud right there. typical adventure story nipps most the darker ways for that gloom to develop right in the bud reality of traveling at all let alone dealing with much all resistance out in the world blocks off most of the more dangerous ways that gloom could develop into the far more terrifying ways of dystopian novels that block off leaving more openly or covertly and give a far greater risk in getting out altogether from resources restriction to having to question how much of what your told about whats out there or how things actually work is real.the typical fantasy world rarely gives remotely the kind of immediate danger sense the actual threats justify in a lot of cases and thats very much because the cargoculted intros lifted from older more knowingly built adventure stories had very idealized set offs.most modern leftist led writing is by exactly the kind of people the old adventure crowd genuinely fucking hated and the morons are typically just dimly aware enough of this dislike to try to punish them for disloyalty to the system absent remotely enough awareness to have the slightest bit useful to say on the subject.its like giving the later half of a story about a boy afraid of a monster in their closet to a creature that pretty much is exactly what the boys afraid of and being perplexed at the market throwing a fit over the result leftists rarely take people actually hating them well.
>>156114521actually get this enough to mess with it and even berserk looks rosy few trade offs tech level wise from just enough magic for elites to hoard it in a still roughly midevil setting can tip things tech wise towards the great war period enough to say magic made some areas of tech easier to develop but be hard pressed to tell by mosts living conditions.living areas tend to be tight and rocky as even the lowest of bottom feeders can suddenly mutate enough to in the worst times and that tends to point towards the two extremes most people spend their time either packed like sardines in what few safe areas exist or in areas clearcut to give as much time for a group to run, hit formation, levy rifles or in the rare luck cases have a character class present capable of dealing with it.rather than the freedom of even just punching things scaling up to fighting the real big bads of the setting normal human limits exist and while there is still more than enough to do too keep even mortal fighters busy the number of threats dire enough to have wiped out humanity with just that alone are enough to need more than just that hence character classes the polite term for the metric fuckload of ways people break human limits to fight the things that otherwise would have wiped out humanity ages ago.they are an existential nightmare in their own right as their are very few that leave one confident in still owning their soul afterwards and most of them fall in very slim categories of high luck to even have the potential for and most mass producible classes are basically polite terms for consistent enough ratio of troops that can hold bigger guns in approximately the right direction per civilians dumped in magical waste per chance of survival absent those guns.people live under constant mutual surveillance and extreme rationing from both being livestock under a tyrannical vampire lord and fantasy staple of entire ecosystem being able to turn into monsters taken seriously
>>156114893aside from whatever lucky few get the potentials for better known classes or are born rich enough to fight for what advancement even can be bought.most will be lucky to win out over being openly used as currency in their lords constant wars as a soul sold off to a devil for the more dubious paths or dumped as cannon fodder just capable of pointing a cannon roughly the right way for a defensive front to hold on being outclassed from the hail mary luck of somehow hitting the thing running faster than the men could hope to respond in melee with the thing cause its it for stuff on that position that even could hurt it too boot.your life is miserable drudgery from living in a glorified hamster cage and are told to be grateful to even be starving over the poor saps ripped limb from limb right outside the gates from a failed goblin repulsion given a whole rank lower clear difficulty than the minimum the poor saps hit on it and realizing its entirely just dumb luck that separates you from being sent off to die just as futilely and callously as what everyone saw last tuesday. and everyone fucking hates and distrusts each other to boot from the thousand little ways everyone fights constantly over necessities to the constant paranioa over how advancing actually happens and if clean ways even exist or if the lords just lie to keep power alongside the constant paranoia over an imp or something sneaking in to give some malcontent the last stuff they should be getting hardly matters whether its what their told or not its power they'll use to knock the table over right when the sorry saps who lost the game were about to finally be knocked off and the sheer growing rage past the fantasy of realizing how many smug cunts with shiteating grins are telling you the exact same lies with the same consequences with the same farce of their smug idiot asses have done jack fucking shit to earn it over being a self important little pawn of a system as rotten as needs saying
>>156113047I just woke up so ill keep it short.The standard paradigm for early modern history was that Men controlled the deeming of value in bodies while Women were the arbiters of when and if intimacy happened.Men got to decide what was hot and women got to decide whether to put out or not, or to get crude, men set the price women decided scarcity.A big part of the underlying 20th century feminist movement was housewives getting mad that they had expectations placed upon the way they looked and acted in accordance with being the supporting sex but also were unable to avoid the universal truth that sex sells. And so a huge underlying crux of modern non-separationist feminist theory is to retain and consolidate all matters and the power therein of sexuality within the female sphere and to depress expectations while retaining value.Obviously not all feminists are explicitly like this, in truth even the aforementioned de Beauvoir did not think the value of sexuality was a significant power in the grand scheme of things, and for many of the modern followers its been buried under the aspirational rhetoric of "all bodies are beautiful" but its still one of the core foundational truths that continues to proliferated as it does make things easier if duller for women. You can still see it pokes through whenever one has envy over another women commercially using her body and in response says it sets a bad precedent.
Is the Christopher Priest run worth looking at? He usually has some interesting ideas
Same exact reason why wonder woman has no good comics. Nobody likes girl bosses.
>>156112719I mean, Red White and Black was pretty good since it was an anthology.
>>156105442>just undo one of the biggest flaws of modern society by yourself to write pul comics
>>156109720why the fuck would i pay to read conan but worse when i already have conan?
>>156116906That's not what anon said though? Is Sword and Sorcery only Conan? I guess you should never read Conan because fantasy books already did it better elsewhere.
>>156117128>because fantasy books already did it better elsewhereThey didn't
>>156117187>BaitedIt's just too easy. lmao>>156116033Didn't read his run but I don't like his Vampirella soooooo
oh its an actual underage keeping this thread bumped, my bad
>>156113365>I don't think it's all that "hard" to have her just be adventuring forever, you just gotta have fun adventures.This. The allure of fantasy has always been the setting. A good settings allows for interesting adventures, good character work, and boundless entertainment. Red Sonja has already had that in the past, it's just somewhere after that, the writers started missing the mark entirely, and that's the issue .
>>156113199And neither should be owned by Dynamite. The stuff they release just stinks more often than not.
>>156116849There was a video I saw a while back that was reviewing a fanmade Batman comic, and the guy was just like "make whatever you want, no one can stop you". And with stuff like patreon, you can pretty much fund your own fan content.
>>156105327tummyyyyy
Well i think there are various factors. One i think dynamite seems to only care about selling variant covers, because you open the books and you get some ugly artwork that looks it was made by amateur people from tumblr.Second, the censorship. And the same happens with vampirella, they are afraid to go all the way, im not saying they should go and make a porn comic, but violence, nudity, sensuality, all those are part of the genre.Third, and it was mentioned before here and i totally agree, people working on this dont care at all. They dont seem to understand the character or they dont care about it.Take a look at the Conan books from Titan comics. The writer apparently loves Conan, the quality of the stories are good, the artwork is often amazing, i would say 85% of the time its good.
>>156119359>i would say 85% of the time its good.Really?
>>156120523yeah for real. On the art side you get artists like Rob de la torre, Doug Braithwaite, Fernando Dagnino.There was even a special issue done by Alex HorleyAnd again the writting is pretty good. Of course its the same Conan stories retold again (if you read the dark horse comics you know what i mean), but with some fresh touches here and there
>>156105327You can just make porn nowadays and get straight to the creampies, so this tease type character isn't that big of a deal anymore if you're aiming for the horny crowd. I don't know if she's a mega slut in the comics cause I only read Conan, but I wouldn't root for used goods. No money from me.And hot chick in a chainmail bikini is fine for an illustration but I'm not sure how interesting she is as a main character beyond that gimmick. I'd rather have Conan.Of course you could go the girlboss feminism route but that would do nobody a favor.So if I had to work with her as a character I'd go full on with>>156105508>"only a man that bests her can bed her"but she's fucking unbeatable, so she's incredibly horny all the time, and the more horny she grows, the more powerful she gets, so she keeps spiraling into this thirsty madness she can barely hold in check. This adds depth and nuance to her character. She visits a village for a quest and takes her reward from killing the brigands or whatever the fuck, but at night before leaving she takes it out on the village girls. Pages of sweaty muscular Sonja wrenching apart the slender legs of a maiden and devouring her teen pussy, SHLORP SHLORP SHLORP SHLORP SHLORP while rubbing herself over her chainmail panties. She just doesn't give a fuck. After forcing five or six orgasms out of the maiden, Sonja lets go and the poor girl sprigs into a frantic run like a deer who got unstuck from a chain fence. Sonja watches the girl disappear in the bush, then looks toward the next village in the distance and wipes girl juice off her chin in the moonlight. "I'm fucking coming, and your maidens are coming too," she says to herself out loud.
>>156115495Thanks for elaborating, anon.
>>156117902Yeah, I was always brought back into Conan because of how cool I thought the world was. It helped that Conan interacted with it in his way and the stories he got caught up in, but I couldn't tell fuck all about any character aside from Conan, and Conan himself is just barbarian pastiche. I've always liked Red Sonja, Oeming's run was great. Gail Simone just *ahem* raped the character, if you will.
>>156105350Fpbp
>>156105350Are the women from the office in the room right now?
>>156122162Speaking of raping female barbarians, the Rowena comics are sadly not the same since extensive raping can't be part of the main series.
>>156122217>tfw no office ladies in the room
>>156105327Name 10 good runs.>>156113421His is the only one I've read, so I've been curious about how it compares in the minds of fans of the book.
>>156123660It's not Thomas or Oeming, but it's not Simone either, so eh.
>>156105327I have read one Red Sonja comic about a decade ago I picked up on a whim. I actually quite liked it. It had something to do with her killing a demon and then saving an overall wimpy guy who grows infatuated with her. Who then tries to beat her in battle after she gets drunk hoping it would give him the edge but she is still too strong and ends up killing him. Only other thing I remember was there was a line I liked were Sonja points out she knows how to sew and cook not by virtue of being a woman but by virtue of being a mercenary soldier living on the road.
>>156105327>Why can't anyone make a good Red Sonja comics too hard :(
>>156112719Ballad of the Red Goddess
>>156105327She has nothing going for her
>>156126437Yeah, I'm sure they usually are
>>156126615Based. So good.
>>156123660>Name 10 good runsEvery time I've eaten at Taco Bell.
