SPIDER-MAN / RED SONJA

Writer: Michael Avon Oeming | Artist: Mel Rubi
Colorist: Brian Buccellato | Letterer: Simon Bowland
Assistant Editors: Alejandro Arbona & Lauren Sankovitch | Editor: Bill Rosemann
Consulting Editor: Joe Rybrandt | Editor in Chief: Joe Quesada | Publisher: Dan Buckley
Special Thanks to: Tom Brevoort, Josh Johnson, Juan Collado, Nick Barrucci, Jason Ullmeyer, Arther Lieberman, and Luke Lieberman
Red Sonja is based on the Heroine Created by Robert E. Howard

In 1979, Marvel, then holder of the license which (at the time) included both Conan and Red Sonja, published a MARVEL TEAM-UP issue pairing the She-Devil with a Sword and Spider-Man in a fight against the evil wizard, Kulan Gath. in 2008, Marvel and current Red Sonja rights-holder, Dynamite Entertainment, teamed up for a sequel to that tale by the then-current RED SONJA creative team of Michael Avon Oeming and Mel Rubi.

It's worth noting that in the interim -- only a few years after the original team-up -- the scripter of that MTU issue, Chris Claremont, penned a sequel story sans Sonja in the pages of UNCANNY X-MEN, in which Kulan Gath transformed New York into a replica of his native Hyborean era and set various mind-controlled superheroes against Spider-Man for revenge. But by that story's conclusion nearly everyone involved, including Spider-Man, had all memory of the incident wiped from their minds.

For this story, Oeming borrows a cue from Claremont as Gath's sinister necklace turns up in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, where a visiting senator is drawn to it and puts it on. This transforms him into the embodiment of Kulan Gath, who promptly turns Manhattan once more into a Hyborean world, and plants a sword for Mary Jane Watson (Parker?) to discover, even while placing a suggestion in her head that Spider-Man is her enemy. Thus MJ finds the sword, turns into Red Sonja as she did years earlier in MARVEL TEAM-UP 79, and goes out to kill the web-slinger.