Comic Book Review for Red Sonja: Black, White, Red #2

The Dialogue

When reading a Red Sonja comic, there’s an expectation about how the characters should speak. They should generally avoid modern speech patterns and words. Any swearing is a “By Crom” or another Hyborian curse word. The first two tales did a good job of managing this. In Listen Close, there were a few speech ballons where I was pulled out of the story. It was like seeing a modern coffee cup on a table in Game of Thrones. “Thiss isss all a game, sssweet-heart.” The monster referencing life is a game and using sweet-heart didn’t seem right. “The gods have given women a wicked game, sssavage/sssshe-devil/ssssword-bearer/ssssslayer.” would have read better. Although it is something that Sonja would likely say, the name-play with the King’s name in a story (that’s apparently being told to a child) also wasn’t cool.