Sorcery Vs Red Sonja

Red Sonja usually fought monsters and men, but occasionally fought sorcerers, like the evil Kulan-Gath (as shown in these two versions of Red Sonja #12 (July, 2006, by George Perez and John Romita Jr).

But, Kulan Gath began his career in Conan The Barbarian #14 (March, 1972), and faced Red Sonja (via possession) along with Spider-Man in Marvel Team-Up #79 (March, 1979).

Kulan Gath would also return to fight the X-Men in Uncanny X-Men #190 and #191, February and March 1985, as well as the Avengers in Avengers #28 through #30, May to July, 2000.

Happy Valentine's Day With Red Sonja

Red Sonja celebrated Valentine's Day back in 2021, with the Red Sonja Valentine's Day Special, with variant covers by Joseph Michael Linsner and Jimmy Broxton, with Sonja acting very unusual with Kulan Gath in throw back covers to romance comics....

....and, a bonus, the photo cover with cosplay girl Savannah Polson as Red Sonja! 

Remembering Artist Steve Lightle

Remembering artist Steve Lightle on his birthday (November 19, 1959 - January 8, 2021) with a couple of his covers to Conan the Barbarian, featuring Conan and Red Sonja - #244 and #246 of May and July, 1991.

Sword Of Conan

Conan the Barbarian, easily the most famous of fantasy's sword slinging heroes, slashed swords with the best of them, here, with Red Sonja in Marvel Feature #7 (November, 1976, with art by Frank Thorne), and with King Kull in Conan The Barbarian #68 (November, 1976, with cover art by Gil Kane, John Romita and Pablo Marcus).

Celebrating Artist Frank Brunner

 

Celebrating fantasy artist Frank Brunner on his birthday (February 21, 1949) in savage style....

....with his three covers for Red Sonja in the 1970s!

Red Sonja #12 and #13 (November, 1978 and January, 1979)

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Red Sonja #14 (March, 1979)

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Frank Thorne's Red Sonja

Though artist Frank Thorne wasn't the creator of Red Sonja (she was created by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith in the pages of Marvel's Conan, and based off of a character of Robert E. Howard's), he was an artist that helped to make the warrior queen popular for his depictions of the character in her metal bikini....and even attending comic conventions dressed as a wizard, encouraging woman to emulate their hero by dressing up as Red Sonja!


Below, we celebrate the approach of summer (a.k.a. bikini season) as well as the birth of Frank Thorne (June, 16th), by covering Frank's covers of Marvel Feature and Red Sonja featuring Red Sonja!

Marvel Feature #2 and #3

 January and March, 1976

Marvel Feature #4 and #5

 May and July, 1976

Marvel Feature #6 and #7

 September and November, 1976

Red Sonja #1 and #2 

 January and March, 1977

Red Sonja #3 and #4

 May and July, 1977

Red Sonja #5 and #6

 September and November, 1977

Red Sonja #7 and #8

 January and March, 1978

Red Sonja #9 and #10

May and July, 1978

Red Sonja #11 and later

September, 1978
#12 to #15 are by Frank Brunner and Dave Cockrum from November, 1978 to May, 1979

Red Sonja continued after Frank left the title, and Frank Thorne created his own sword wielding woman, Ghita Of Alizzar, which appeared in Warren Publishing's 1984/1994 magazine from 1979 to 1983, the tales of which have since been collected a few times over the decades (fair warning, these are NOT tales for kids!).  Red Sonja even teamed up with Spider-Man in Marvel Team-Up!

Red Sonja has even found herself in comics in the 21st Century, with Dynamite publishing her current adventures.  The company has even reprinted all of Marvel's tales of Red Sonja, including Frank's issues, in their 4 "Adventures of Red Sonja" tradepaperbacks (with the last, though not including any interior art by Frank Thorne, boasts a cover drawn by him!).

Volume 1 features the 7 Marvel Feature issues, Volume 2 features Red Sonja #1 through #7, Volume 3 features Red Sonja #8 to #14, and Volume 4 features the Red Sonja tales from Savage Sword of Conan and Red Sonja #15...all in color!

Better still, Dynamite has produced three larger than life collections of Frank Thorne's Red Sonja...featuring reproductions of the original art from the Marvel series in a larger size, and in black and white...

...with Volume 1 featuring her Marvel Feature issues, Volume 2 featuring Red Sonja's #1 to #6,

...and Volume 3 featuring Red Sonja's #7 to #11, giving readers a chance to see Red Sonja as Frank Throne did as he drew her!





Frank Thorne even provided variant covers for the 2013/2014 five issue Legends of Red Sonja mini-series with new tales of fantasy's favorite heroine!  It's hard to keep an old wizard down!

Spider-Man’s Amazing Movie Team-Ups!

Spidey’s kept up an amazing run over the years, meeting with various other Marvel heroes in Marvel Team-Up (and, well, just about any title Spider-Man has been in).

With his latest movie, the Amazing Spider-Man, Spidey’s all ready to take over the big screen again!  But….it doesn’t seem likely he’ll be teaming up with the Dark Knight (sort of obvious, Batman’s DC and Spidey’s Marvel), or sadly, even with his fellow Avengers (Spidey had been a part of the team in the comics) as the Amazing Spider-Man is being produced by Columbia Pictures (and it was Paramount Pictures that brought us the Avengers, and its movies, Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America: the First Avenger)…and Spidey’s fellow New Yorkers like the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Elektra, the X-Men and the Punisher are spread out as well!  (The less said about the travelling Ghost Rider….and, well, there’s Howard the Duck as well….and the approaching Guardians of the Galaxy).

Still, this doesn’t stop the comics from teaming them up, or even having your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man meet with other movie franchise stars, even as part of his regular comic book appearances.  So, let’s take a look at a few of those!  And, wouldn’t any of these be the blockbuster of the summer?

This Bites

One of the earliest meetings of these type was when Spider-Man confronted Dracula in Giant-Size Spider-Man #1 (July 1974, by Len Wein and Ross Andru), where the characters cross…on a boat.  It’s a little more serious than that (Peter was there to help Aunt May with an illness…), but still pretty basic (and though the cover implies differently, Spidey and Dracula never meet).  Dracula had been added to the Marvel Universe with Tomb of Dracula back in April 1972 (by Gerry Conway, Roy Thomas and Gene Colan), and had been encountering the occasional Marvel character as time progressed (as well as having a few created there as well, such as Blade, who fronted his own movie franchise of the daywalking vampire with Wesley Snipes as the titular character).  Not an actual tie-in to any specific Dracula, but I’ve always felt he looked a little like the Christopher Lee version from the Hammer Films (though with a bit of the classic Bela Lugosi thrown in)…Marvel’s version of Dracula was one of the stronger ones, and most of the better adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Gothic character had something of this look involved.

Pieces Get Together

Dracula wasn’t the only classic Universal Monster Spidey ran into.  Frankenstein Monster’s rose to meet the webslinger in Marvel Team-Up #36 (August 1975, by Gerry Conway and Sal Buscema).  Frankenstein’s Monster was in an issue of Silver Surfer, but started in earnest with The Monster of Frankenstein #1 (January 1973, by Gary Friedrich and Mike Ploog), and lasted for 18 issue (with the title switching to The Frankenstein Monster with issue #6) until he ran into the Amazing Spider-Man.  Or, more accurately, Spidey and the Monster were kidnapped by Baron Ludwig von Shtupf to help create a new breed of monsters (under the baron’s control, of course).  The two worked together (as they also faced Spidey’s werewolf foe, the Man-Wolf, who had returned from the moon) and the Mary Shelley’s Universal Monster shambled off to pop up here and there (as a member of the undead Avengers foes, the Legion of the Unliving, or with Iron Man fighting the Dreadknight, a distant relation of the Black Knight), and this Frankenstein’s Monster looks like an amalgam of the earlier versions, having longer hair than and a thinner look than the classic version by Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi or even Glenn Strange. who met Bela Lugosi‘s Dracula (along with Bud Abbott & Lou Costello in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein).

Pulp Muscles

Spidey didn’t just encounter old monsters, but those that fought them as well.  Spidey met another guy with big muscles, the old pulp hero, Doc Savage in Giant-Size Spider-Man #3 (January 1975, by Gerry Conway and Ross Andru).  Lester Dent‘s Man of Bronze first appeared in Doc Savage Magazine in March 1933 and Clark Savage Jr was a “perfect human being”, at least in terms of strength, speed and mental abilities, and he and his band of compatriots fought criminals and spies.  Marvel started comic book adaptations of his stories with Doc Savage #1  (October 1972, by Roy Thomas, Steve Englehart and Ross Andru) which lasted eight issues.  Sadly, Spidey and Doc don’t actually meet in the Giant-Size either, but both spend their time working against blue alien babe named DeSinna in their own times (Marvel at least kept Doc set in the 1930s when they used him).  Doc does meet a later Marvel star, the Fantastic Four’s Thing, in Marvel Two-In-One #21 (November 1976, by Bill Mantlo and Ron Wilson).  Though the movie came out in June 1975, Andru‘s Doc Savage does have a “Ron Ely” quality (Ron Ely being the actor to portray Doc in Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze).  And, Hollywood plans more with a new Doc Savage movie to come.

Sexy Swordplay

Keeping with the idea of the old pulps, Spidey met the female barbarian lead, the Red Sonja in Marvel Team-Up #79 (March 1979, by Chris Claremont and John Byrne).  Red Sonja came from the pages of Conan the Barbarian (#23,  February 1973, by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith) and was based loosely on Red Sonya from Robert E. Howard‘s “The Shadow Of The Vulture” short story from January 1934 (not originally a Conan story, which led to an eventual separation in the rights between owning Red Sonja and Conan), ending up with 7 issues of Marvel Feature, and 3 series of her own at Marvel (lasting 15 issues, 2 issues and 13 issues).  This story did have the two characters meet, more or less, using a bit of magical trickery (needed to fight Red Sonja’s old magical foe, Kulan Gath, who manifested in the here and now).  A delightful story of Spidey fighting along side the metal-bikinied red-head, along with a surprise or two here and there (look for a mild mannered Daily Planet reporter to make a cameo).  Red Sonja’s now a big franchise at Dynamite Comics, and they worked with Marvel to make a Spider-Man/Red Sonja mini-series (more or less following up on the idea in this story…running a bit too long, but still having some fun with the idea).  Sadly, less fun was the 1985 Red Sonja movie with Brigette Nielsen as the main character (with Arnold Schwarzenegger playing a Conan-like character in the movie, but not Conan, as back then it was still rare for movie franchises to crossover).

Look, Up In The Sky!

Though not in a normal comic, but in a large Treasury edition, Spider-Man encountered Supeman in a historic Marvel and DC team-up!  True, DC and Marvel worked together the year before to produce a treasury sized (that mean larger than normal comic) adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz“, but in January, 1976, we readers were treated to Superman Vs. The Amazing Spider-Man….”the Greatest Superhero Team-Up of All Time!” by Gerry Conway and Ross Andru (with help from Neal Adams, Dick Giordano, Terry Austin, Josef Rubinstein and Bob Wiacek….hey, something this big needed an army of artists!  As well as words from Stan Lee and Carmine Infantino as well).  In this story, Superman tosses Lex Luthor into prison, as Spider-Man does to his own foe, Doctor Octopus.  Just so happens, for this story, the two end up in prison together, and are able to escape.  Though the machinations of the villains, the two heroes fight each other (part of those plans included the kidnapping of Lois Lane and Mary Jane Watson, the paramours of the titular heroes), figure out that they were tricked, and then team-up to save the girls and defeat the bad guys.  Oddly enough, it had been suggested to Lee and Infantino to do a movie detailing this battle, but it was Superman – the Movie (with the iconic Christopher Reeve as Superman, that eventually came out in December 1978) and a few Spider-Man TV movies (with lesser known Nicholas Hammond in the later 1970s).  Reeve went on to play Superman three more times, and, Superman has been a regular presence in the movies and television for decades, even making it to Saturday Night Live on occasion…which is ironic!

Live From New York

Lastly, Spidey met up with one of his strangest team-ups ever….meeting the real life stars of Stripes, the Blues Brothers, Coneheads, Invaders From Mars, Haunted Honeymoon and Car Wash…or at least the actors who played characters in those movies when Spidey teamed up with the Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time Players in Marvel Team-Up #74 (October 1978, by Chris Claremont and Bob Hall).  Taking the idea that Stan Lee would be able to host SNL (and, hey, why’s that so hard to believe…well, it’s easy now, but Stan hadn’t been guest-starring in Marvel movies back then…), and a little postal problem…the villainous Silver Samurai ends up trying to fight John Belushi for a ring mistakenly delivered to the comedy star…and Spidey ends up having to work with the cast to keep John safe (and the show on the air).  It does sound like this is a really odd idea, but the story works (and leads to a multi-issue crossover a little later in the series, where Spider-Man works with Nick Fury and Black Widow (who have been a few movies together recently) as well as Shang-Chi (the son of Fu Manchu)….and Fu Manchu, there’s a fellow who has been in some old movies as well!

At least Saturday Night Live didn’t forget one Avenger that the big screen Avengers did…the Ant-Man!

(Hey, he retains the strength of a human…at ant-size!  Just ask him!  It’s poor Garrett Morris as Ant-Man, John Belushi as the Hulk…and Dan Aykroyd as the Flash…).