FLASH GORDON: KINGS CROSS #1 - 5

Written by: Jeff Parker & Jesse Hamm | Drawn by: Jesse Hamm
Colored by: Grace Allison | Lettered by: Simon Bowland
Packaged & Edited by: Nate Cosby

I don't really follow Dynamite much. I peruse their Comixology sales now and then, but I don't pay a lot of attention with what they're doing with their various licenses -- I just buy stuff that looks interesting. And FLASH GORDON: KINGS CROSS looked like something I might enjoy. Starring some of King Features' most popular comic strip heroes and drawn in a really clean, cartoony style, it looked like a lot of fun. So I picked it up and let it sit for a while, finally reading it recently.

...And boy was I confused! At first I thought we were jumping into some new epic en media res, with the characters having already met at various points in the past and lots of references to things that had already happened, but had never actually been published. Sort of like George Lucas's concept for the original STAR WARS: joining the saga as if it were the middle of an ongoing movie serial. So I figured things like the presence of a black Phantom and a Phantom-in-training named Jen would be explained as we went along, and the oblique references to unseen past events would be fleshed out.

This was my impression, at least, until partway through the second issue when a footnote appeared. "Check KINGS QUEST 1 - 5 for that epic tale!", it said.

KINGS... QUEST? Wow, they're really going all-in on pretending there were stories that preceded this one! A fake footnote! Clever, I thought. But still... I figured maybe I should just Google this to be sure.

RED SONJA: THE BALLAD OF THE RED GODDESS

Writer: Roy Thomas | Artists: Esteban Maroto & Santi Casas
Letterer: Tom Napolitano

Did you know that Esteban Maroto created Red Sonja's iconic "chainmail bikini" look? I had no idea! I knew that John Buscema was the first to draw it in the monthly CONAN THE BARBARIAN comic, but I'm pretty sure I read someplace years ago that it was Neal Adams who came up with the famous metal two-piece. Turns out, according to the foreword to this volume, Adams inked the outfit's debut, but Maroto penciled it at the request of writer/editor Roy Thomas.

Now I'm sure this little tidbit has been known in general for quite some time, but it was news to me, so I thought I'd share it before we move along into THE BALLAD OF THE RED GODDESS, an original graphic novel created first for the Spanish market and eventually translated into English by Dynamite. This story reunites Thomas, Maroto, and Sonja several decades on, and teams them with another artist, Santi Casas, for good measure.

Again per the forewords (there are three; one by each creator -- plus an afterword by Maroto as well), the story was created in the "Marvel method" -- and that means the purest form of that method, from the dawn of the Marvel age. It was plotted by the artists, Maroto and Casas, and then scripted by Thomas. But the overall package is pretty seamless, and it's nigh-impossible to tell the collaboration was done this way.

SPRINGTIME GRAB BAG

It's time once more for that annual tradition where I dig through the various and sundry comics I've bought but have yet to read, and review some of them. This year, I've got offerings in the queue from DC, Dark Horse (sort of), and Dynamite.

We'll start on Monday with the first DC offering, a crossover I would've gone nuts for as a child: HE-MAN/THUNDERCATS. I bought this one a few years ago via Comixology, I think around the same time I also picked up BATMAN/TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES ADVNTURES, but I just never got around to it until now.

We'll follow that up with another crossover, also half from DC: WONDER WOMAN/CONAN. The Conan half of the story comes from Dark Horse, back when they still had the license. And then we'll keep the Conan theme running with a book I grabbed in a Comixology sale when Dark Horse lost that license: CONAN: THE DAUGHTERS OF MIDORA & OTHER STORIES. But our Hyborian Age antics won't end there! The following week, we'll read our first of two books from Dynamite: RED SONJA: THE BALLAD OF THE RED GODDESS, written by Sonja's co-creator, Roy Thomas.

After that, it's one final Dynamite offering: FLASH GORDON: KING'S CROSS, a limited series which sort of revisited the concept of the 1980s DEFENDERS OF THE EARTH cartoon series, in that it teams up King Features' best-known comic strip action stars -- Flash, the Phantom, and Mandrake the Magician. And then we'll hop over to IDW for a look at last year's STAR TREK/TRANSFORMERS series.

All of this will take us through April, and when it's done I'll reveal what's coming up next: something from the House of Ideas, a place we haven't visited in over a year, if you can believe it!

ROBOTECH/VOLTRON

Written by: Bill Spangler (#2 - 5) with Tommy Yune
Art and Letters by: Digital Art Chefs Team* | Pencils and Digital Inks by: Elmer Damaso
Production Manager: James L. Palabay | Supervisor for Colors and Letters: Melvin Calingo
Colors by: Lariz Santos, Armand Roy Canlas, Sam Gelua, and Melvin Calingo
Letters by: Armand Roy Canlas and Melvin Calingo | Covers by: Tommy Yune

I've never really watched VOLTRON. As a kid, much like ROBOTECH, it didn't appeal to me. As a teenager, I checked it out on Toonami (the same programming block which soon introduced me to ROBOTECH and made me a fan). I still couldn't get into it. What was the deal with Pidge's bizarre voice? Why was Michael Bell playing an old lady? These questions burned through my brain to the point that I didn't want to give the show a chance, and I've never looked back.

But in 2013-14, Dynamite published a ROBOTECH/VOLTRON crossover miniseries and since ROBOTECH had been entirely absent from comics since PRELUDE TO THE SHADOW CHRONICLES eight years earlier, I decided to check it out even though the interdimensional crossover seemed an odd choice for the more-or-less grounded universe of ROBOTECH.

The story is... all right. Tommy Yune sure does love to revisit those early "Macross" days, though. I'm not necessarily complaining; I like that era as well -- but between FROM THE STARS, LOVE AND WAR, and now ROBOTECH/VOLTRON, he's returned to pre-ROBOTECH Macross Island in about half of his mini-series since 2003.

In this case, our tale begins on the planet Arrus in Voltron's universe, where the Voltron lion team is lost while investigating a comet passing close to their world. Then, in ROBOTECH's dimension, that same comet comes near Earth on the day the Zentraedi attack the SDF-1 launch ceremony on Macross Island. The Zentraedi flagship is lost to the comet and SDF-1 conducts a hyperspace fold to avoid being hit as well.

RED SONJA / CONAN: BLOOD OF A GOD

Written by: Victor Gischler | Art by: Roberto Castro
Colors by: Alex Guimaráes | Letters by: Simon Bowland | Edited by: Joseph Rybandt
Conan was created by Robert E. Howard
Red Sonja based on a character by Robert E. Howard | In memory of Arthur Lieberman

A few months after the end of Dark Horse's CONAN/RED SONJA, Dynamite picked up the crossover reins for RED SONJA/CONAN: BLOOD OF A GOD. Written by Victor Gischler with art from Roberto Castro, this mini-series serves as a direct sequel to the story crafted by Gayle Simone and Jim Zub at Dark Horse, though it can easily be read on its own; enough backstory and recap is given that no one should feel lost within its pages.

The story begins many years ago, on the same day as the Simone/Zub tale. In that story, Conan and Sonja met as they stole a box containing Bloodroot seeds from the chamber of a corrupt prince. Here, we learn that the morning before the theft occurred, a moderately skilled mage named Kal'ang was directed by a blind shaman to steal one such seed from the prince. The story then leaps ahead many years (though just how many is open for debate as will be discussed below). Some time after their defeat of Thoth-Amon in CONAN/RED SONJA, the Cimmerian barbarian and the Hyrkanian she-devil cross paths once more, hired as co-generals for army of the kingdom of Kush. Sonja and Conan are to lead Kush's forces in an invasion of neighboring Stygia, which is ruled by Kal'ang himself, still advised by the blind seer.

Following an epic battle with giants and monsters, in which the entirety of their forces are killed, Conan and Sonja storm the castle of Stygia and battle even more horrific creatures, such as a giant three-headed rat and an enormous spider filled with many smaller spiders. All have been mutated by a strain of the Bloodroot. When our heroes finally reach the castle's throne room, they find Kal'ang killed by his advisor, now revealed as Thoth-Amon.

CONAN / RED SONJA

Script by: Gail Simone & Jim Zub | Pencils by: Dan Panosian (#1-2) & Randy Green (#3-4)
Inks by: Dan Panosian (#1-2) & Rick Ketcham (#3-4) | Colors by: Dave Stewart
Letters by: Jimmy Betancourt at Comicraft
Conan was created by Robert E. Howard
Red Sonja is based on a character created by Robert E. Howard

At some point in the nineties, the rights to Red Sonja and Conan split apart. Sonja had been created by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith for Marvel's CONAN THE BARBARIAN comic series, but somehow her intellectual property was deemed separate from Conan's but also separate from Marvel's. Both IPs were allowed to make use of Robert E. Howard's Hyborean Age settings and concepts, but neither could use the other's title character. Thus, for close to two decades, Conan has been published by Dark Horse Comics while Sonja has had a home at Dynamite for about the past ten years. And for a while, rumor had it that Dark Horse and Dynamite were not willing to play nice for any sort of crossover.

So it was kind of a big deal in 2013 when the two publishers jointly announced a CONAN/RED SONJA mini-series to be written by the characters' respective ongoing writers, Brian Wood and Gail Simone, and published by Dark Horse. The series eventually saw print in 2015 with Wood replaced by Jim Zub, and a collected edition was released later in the year -- which brings us here.

The story by Simone and Zub follows Conan and Red Sonja across a handful of meetings spanning several years of their lives. The first encounter each other in their youth, a pair of brigands hired separately to steal a precious box from a corrupt prince. The container's contents are eventually revealed as deadly "bloodroot seeds", and the man after them is a servant of the evil wizard Thoth-Amon. Conan and Sonja are unimpressed, burning the seeds before they can be turned into a weapon of mass destruction, then killing their employer and going their separate ways.

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.

RED SONJA #0 - 6

"THE MESSAGE" | "THE FLAMING SKULLS" | "LIFE & DEATH"
"TIDE TURNS" | "TOWER OF BLOOD" | "FALLING STAR"
Writers: Michael Avon Oeming w/Mike Carey | Art: Mel Rubi
Colors: Caesar Rodriguez w/Richard Isanove (#1-4), Brian Buccellato (#5), & Blond (#6)
Color Assists: Imaginary Friends Studios (#3), Michael Kelleher (#4)
Letters: Richard Starkings & Comicraft w/Josh Johnson and Rich Wenzke
Editorial Consultant: Luke Lieberman | Based on the Heroine Created by Robert E. Howard
Special Thanks to Arthur Lieberman at Red Sonja Corporation

There are two tropes I particularly enjoy in the world of sword & sorcery fantasy: the "lone warrior wandering the world", righting wrongs and getting involved in local struggles against hell-born demons, evil wizards, or corrupt kings, and the "she-devil with a sword" wearing impractical "armor" and killing everything in her path. Obviously the latter was pioneered by Red Sonja herself, and the former is on full display as well in this inaugural outing from Red Sonja's 2005 series (a series which would go on to run 80 issues plus numerous mini-series and one-shots before being rebooted in 2013).

There were several occasions when I considered reading the Dynamite series, but one thing above others kept turning me off: I just didn't like the art. Something about Mel Rubi's work didn't appeal to me, and because of that, I never gave this series a chance. But last year Dynamite partnered with Humble Bundle and put several digital comics up for sale in a "pay what you want" deal. I dropped a few dollars for the chance to finally check out this series.

Issue 0 begins with Sonja entering a small town, where she's attacked by (and kills) a number of men looking to rob her. Following this brief introduction, issues 1 through 6 of the series feature Sonja defending a messenger from the city of Gathia who is ultimately killed while in her care. She relays his message to the city and winds up getting abducted by a priest to help his resistance in overthrowing Gathia's sinister ruler, the Celestial. The coup is successful with the aid of Gathia's savage neighbors, the Zedda, but the priest is murdered and the city's inhabitants -- men, women, and children alike -- are slaughtered by the Zedda as Sonja proceeds on her way.

THE HYBOREAN AGE

Art by Alex Ross

Though by no means a hardcore fan, I do enjoy dabbling now and then in the sword-and-sorcery genre, and for me, no world better represents my ideal version of that concept than Robert E. Howard's "Hyborean Age" featuring Conan the Cimmerian and Red Sonja, she-devil of the Hyrkanian steppes.

A while back I covered MARVEL TEAM-UP #79, which featured a pairing of Spider-Man and Sonja, and noted at the time that my review copy of the issue was included as part of Marvel's printing of the 2009 SPIDER-MAN/RED SONJA mini-series. Since then, a couple of "Unboxings" have shown that I picked up the CONAN/RED SONJA and RED SONJA/CONAN crossovers from Dark Horse and Dynamite, respectively. And on top of all that, last year I pitched in a few dollars to a Dynamite-sponsored Humble Bundle which netted me a digital version of the opening story arc to Dynamite's 2005 RED SONJA ongoing series.

Now, each Friday for the next few weeks, I'm going to cover all those bits and pieces of Hyborean lore. We'll lead off with RED SONJA #1 - 6, followed a week later by SPIDER-MAN/RED SONJA, then it'll be on to CONAN/RED SONJA before closing things out with RED SONJA/CONAN. So this past Friday's MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE installment was merely a prelude to a month of brawny barbarians, buxom she-warriors, and more decapitations than you can handle. I'm looking forward to this.

THE UNBOXING - FEBRUARY 2016

Marvel, DC, and Dynamite all asked me to be their Valentine today, offering books in exchange for love. I'm still trying to figure out which to go with.

First is a new printing of an older collection from Marvel, THUNDERBOLTS CLASSIC volume 1. As evidenced by the fact that I declared it my #5 favorite Marvel run of all time, I loved the Kurt Busiek/Mark Bagley (and later Fabian Nicieza/Mark Bagley) THUNDERBOLTS. But the first printing of this trade came out before I became a collected editions junkie, and I never picked it -- or the subsequent two -- up.

But Marvel is reissuing all three THUNDERBOLTS CLASSIC books and, even though the originals aren't exactly hard to find, I've decided to go for these new editions. Volume 2 and volume 3 are available for pre-order, and HAWKEYE & THE THUNDERBOLTS volume 1 and volume 2, continuing where THUNDERBOLTS CLASSIC leaves off, are in the works as well, and will bring the reprint series up through issue 50.

From DC, we have SHOWCASE PRESENTS: BATMAN volume 6, a black-and-white collection of severeal BATMAN and DETECTIVE COMICS issues from the early to mid-seventies. I'm not a huge fan of the ESSENTIAL/SHOWCASE format, generally preferring my comics in color, but there are a few art styles for which I believe the black-and-white newsprint format looks really nice -- and this Neal Adams/Irv Novick Batman stuff definitely applies.

Last up is RED SONJA/CONAN: BLOOD OF A GOD, Dynamite's contribution to the inter-company Hyborian Age crossover begun last year with Dark Horse's CONAN/RED SONJA. I have plans to cover both these collections, along with a couple more items, in a little Hyborian grab bag coming up this spring, so watch for that soon.

Until March, that's it for now.