Just The Axe, Ma'am #16
A monthly curated newsletter of New & Notable Sword & Sorcery
THIS MONTH’S NEWS & UPDATES
+ Red Sonja is a Sword & Sorcery character that originated in comics but went on to novels, movies, and at least one guest appearance on the 1990s live-action Conan TV Show.
Initially, there was no Red Sonja; instead, Red Sonya of Rogatino appeared in a straightforward historical adventure in the final issue of The Magic Carpet Magazine, dated January 1934. Set in the 16th century, Sonya is the sister of a Ruthenian harem girl who is looking to avenge her death.
Taking inspiration from how Howard would rewrite historical pirate yarns and unsold King Kull stories as Conan stories, so too did Roy Thomas rewrite “Shadow of the Vulture” as a Conan story, with Red Sonya getting transformed into Red Sonja as illustrated by Barry Windsor Smith.
The creation of comic writer Roy Thomas and artist Barry Windsor Smith, she originally appeared in “Shadow of the Vulture,” which appeared in Conan The Barbarian #24, as a thief who crosses Conan’s path. Notably, she was initially outfitted in silk breeks and an ill-fitting chainmail shirt that at least suggested it was pulled off a corpse.
However, as the character grew in popularity, artist Esteban Maroto redesigned the outfit to the striking, if less practical, “Chainmail Bikini” that artist Frank Thorne made iconic when the character’s popularity grew to spawn a solo series.
It became a popular outfit for the cosplayers of the 1970s, among them future Elfquest writer/artist Wendi Pini, who once surprised actor Jamie Farr on the old Mike Douglas daytime talk show.
By the early 1980s, the character had become the subject of six novels by the collaborative team of Sword & Sorcery authors David C. Smith and Richard L. Tierney.
Ironically, at the same time that the book covers continued to use chainmail bikini imagery, Marvel launched a second Red Sonja comic, in which they switched to a more demure blue tunic.
More famously, a big Hollywood movie starring Brigitte Neilsen as the heroine, a totally-not-Conan played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, with a score from Ennio Morricone, and written by Harry Flashman scribe George MacDonald Fraser and directed by Richard Fleischer, who unfortunately by this point is a long way from his 1958 film The Vikings.
That film’s failure at the box office reflected an overall decline in Sword & Sorcery’s popularity, and Red Sonja disappeared for a good 20 years other than a brief one-shot at Marvel Comics.
However, in 2004, Marvel sold the rights to the character to a new LLC that was devoted to reviving the character from Dynamite Comics, where the character received a number of revisions, reboots and reincarnations over the years while tinkering with doing away with some of the more unseemly aspects of the character concept:
She has supreme weapon skill as long as she lies with no man, and the only way a man can lie with her is defeating her in combat, which has unfortunate implications about her lack of consent over who she lies with.
Among the changes was Gail Simone making her canonically bisexual (possibly to sidestep the whole “lie with no man” thing).
Today, we are at a point where the character again appears in multiple media, with ongoing comics from Dynamite, a movie from M.J. Bassett on the way starring Matilda Lutz, and now a new novel from Gail Simone herself.
Consumed is now available from Orbit Books.
Time will tell if this is a definite resurgence for her, but the ongoing Sword & Sorcery revival is when such a character has a chance of being back in fashion.
+ Shatter The Sun: Queer Tales of Unknown Adventure was funded successfully by 324 people raising $19,164, and The LGBTQIA+ themed Sword & Sorcery anthology will feature authors Elly Bangs, Dominique Dickey, Eboni Dunbar, LP Kindred, Anya Ow and AP Thayer, with poetry from L.X. Beckett, story game from Sharang Biswas, and a comic from Dante Luiz. There will also be interior illustrations by Matt Spencer.
Another half-dozen slots are available in the anthology's ongoing submission call. You can find out more here.
+ Abby Roberts discusses how her interest in Egyptian Hieroglyphics (as in the book pictured above) led to her story that appeared in last month’s Swords & Sorcery magazine (“A Hoard of Infinite Meanings,” which you can read online here)
COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS
+ Titan Comics announced a new Solomon Kane series. Based on the Robert E. Howard character, this tale of the fanatical Puritan swordsman will be written and drawn by Patrick Zircher, a long-time Sword & Sorcery fan who has been attracting rave reviews for his Solomon Kane backup stories in Titan’s new Savage Sword of Conan magazine.
The new six-issue series will feature covers by another long-time Weird Fiction and Sword & Sorcery fan, no less than Mike Mignola.
+ The Heavy Metal Magazine Kickstarter is now live. They have revealed some Sword & Sorcery-related creators and features, among them a new tale of The Mercenary from Vicente Segrelles, a Legends of Taarna short story from Joe Linsner, plus Leah Moore and John Reppion writing Taarna’s ongoing adventures, accompanied by art from Anna Morozova.
All this, plus a series of covers of interest to the S&S fan, like a licensed Frank Frazetta cover, a Dan Brereton portrait of Taarna, and a psychotic green-skinned Barbarian art from Skinner.
+ Vault Comics, publishers of Barbaric, Heathen, and the new Deathstalker series have released their own Holiday Gift Guide for 2025.
+ Speaking of Holiday Gift Guides, if you only started reading the newsletter in 2024, you might have missed The Holiday Gift Guide I released last year, rounding up some of the best of recent Sword & Sorcery.
That, along with the books I’ve covered this year, are all I’d advise to give to either the genre newcomer or the Sword & Sorcery fan who thinks they have everything.
INTERVIEWS & PANELS
Matthew John is interviewed about his work as the new TTRPG Conan: The Hyborian Age designer, his views on Sword & Sorcery, and his collection To Walk on Worlds.
+ GMB Chomichuk and Jeremy Gillespie held the book release for Once Lands at McNally Robinson. They were joined by their fellow Shared World collaborators Chadwick Ginther and Jonathan Ball, who live-streamed their release and included an interactive element with the audience.
+ Howard Andrew Jones, diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, received an appreciation of his Hanuvar novels at the Baen Free Radio Hour with Griffin Barber, Toni Weisskopf, Kacey Ezell, Melissa Olthoff, and Mark Rigney.
Jones’ third book in the series, Shadow of the Smoking Mountain, is available now.
MAGAZINES
HEROIC FANTASY QUARTERLY:
HFQ released issue #61, which is free for online readers. This issue’s edition features the stories:
Asu and the Demon Wolf, by Daniel Gedge
Suffer the Witch, by Rev. Joe Kelly
Bells Beyond the Shore: A Jack ‘o Wraths Tale, by Phil Emery
As well as the poems:
A Curse to Archery, by Aidan Redwing
Homeward, by Scott T. Hutchison
You can also listen to an audio reading of “Homeward” by Karen Menzel.
They also uploaded Page 13 of Gary McClusky’s ongoing adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s “Spear and Fang.”
If you are interested in their Patreon, click here.
NEW EDGE SWORD & SORCERY:
+ It is confirmed issues 3 & 4 will be shipped out on December 9.
As always, you can try their free issue #0 here.
OLD MOON QUARTERLY:
+ Physical editions of issues 7 and 8 have now been sent to Kickstarter backers.
SWORDS & SORCERY MAGAZINE:
In issue #154, Editor Curtis Ellett offers “Thanks Again” for all the support and three new stories for one to read online for free:
”The Eighth God” by Matthew Ilseman
”Cast No Shadow” by Cameron MacLeod
”Spear and Tower” by Eric Williams
Plus:
“Let This Be The Hour When We Draw Maps Together " is a surprisingly philosophical essay by cartography enthusiast Jonathan Olfert on the use of maps in Sword & Sorcery.
If you enjoy the magazine, consider supporting it on Patreon.
TRIAPA:
+ Issue #16 was released on November 1st, and the following authors contributed a 2-page amateur zine.
Andy Darby, Because the Bastards won’t write themselves, Issue 6
Carl Ellis, Tales from the Valley XI
Rom Parsons, Brazen Blades, Issue 5
Neil Wilcox, Solar Orbit Cinderella, Issue 4
Stew Shearer, Bloodied and Bound
Chase A. Folmar & Jason Ray Carney, Witchmark 3
Black Cavalier Designs, 12 Leagues To Averoigne Vol 1, Issue 15
David J. Lynch, Ink and Hatchet: Musings on Larger than Life Fiction (Nov 2024, Issue 15)
Matt Holder, Pandemonizine, Nov 2024, Issue 13
Ben Gardiner, Caliginous Chronicles, Vol III
Letters – Acute Epistles 1-15
TRIAPA is an Amateur Press Association founded by Spiral Tower Press, the people behind the Amateur Zines Way Station, Whetstone and Witch House.
If you want to submit a zine for TRIAPA, please send a 2-page zine (maximum) to spiraltowerpress@gmail.com. They invite and encourage all fans of sword and sorcery, cosmic horror, and space opera to submit.
Find out more and check out all previous editions here.
MUSIC
+ Monsters, Madness and Magic interviews Mina Walkure, the Spanish singer of the Swedish Heavy Metal band Bronze, over her reading of Robert E. Howard, the ins and outs of music and touring, and what moving to Sweden was like.
PODCASTS ON PARADE
+ The Crom Cast looked at more movies this month that they think are in the spirit of Robert E. Howard. Their first episode for November is The 2010 medieval horror film Black Death starring Sean Bean and the 2001 movie The Brotherhood of the Wolf, an absolutely bonkers kung-fu creature feature set in pre-Revolutionary France from Christophe Gans.
Their second looks at Nicolas Winding Rifn’s 2010 arthouse take on Vikings starring Mads Mikkelsen, Valhalla Rising, and David Lowery’s hallucinatory interpretation of Arthurian Legend with Dev Patel, The Green Knight.
You can listen to both episodes here.
REVIEWS
+ Liam’s Lyceum reviews two recent works of non-fiction and fiction in Sword & Sorcery. The first is the essay “Reading Sword & Sorcery to Make The Present Less Real” by Jason Ray Carney, which first appeared in the L.A. Review of Books that you can read here.
The other is the review of The Blood of Ambrose by James Enge, the first book in the series of stories about Morlock Ambrosius.
+ I am just one of the various people summarizing the history of Red Sonja for new readers this month and for people curious about the latest novel.
However, none of us can deliver the information and give a review of the book with the adorability of this elderly British couple. It's very charming to watch.
+ Moving over to the other reviews of note for Gail Simone’s novel, we wish to point to this review of it by
[W]hat makes the book interesting isn’t the plot so much as Simone’s understanding that she needs to answer—or better still, just ask—how it is that a character like Red Sonja is able to survive and thrive in her world. Simone’s Red Sonja is sort of half-aware of her status as a living legend, and at her best when she’s displaying a low-minded imperiousness—not unlike Lieber’s Fafhrd or Robert E. Howard’s Conan—invested in her own comfort and pleasure above all else, and only deigning to help others when the whiff of adventure intrigues her.
S. B. at the Beauty in Ruins blog gives one of the more thoughtful reviews of the novel.
“This is vintage sword & sorcery, complete with action, adventure, magic, and monsters. It’s violent and ugly at times, more concerned with survival than hope, and often disturbingly mad.”
SUBMISSIONS
The following markets are dedicated to or specified to accept Sword & Sorcery.
+ BFS Horizons, put out by The British Fantasy Society, is always open. 500 - 5000 Words. The remuneration is £20. Submission Guidelines.
+ Indie Bites, a non-profit fantasy anthology series put out by Silversun Books, is available on Kindle Unlimited and is looking for stories for its upcoming Bards & Bargains-themed issue. Deadline: 28 February 2025. Accepts up to 7500 Words. The honorarium is £5. Submission Guidelines.
+ Neon Hemlock Press is open for submissions Nov 1 - Jan 15 for queer themed Sword & Sorcery for their anthology Shatter The Sun" “pulp heroism in conversation with Samuel R. Delany's Nevèrÿon, Conan and Red Sonja, Imaro and Xena.” 8 cents per word, 4-6000 words maximum.
Read more about it here.
+ Seize The Press, ”Writers, please send us more fantasy! Particularly dark sword & sorcery, historical horror, grimdark, but anything you think falls under dark fantasy and all the weird stuff you can't truly pin down.”
Three pence GBP per word, max 7500 words. Submission Guidelines.
+ Swords & Sorcery is always open. Takes 1500 - 7500 words. Payment: USD 10. Submission Guidelines.
Thank you for reading to the end! If you like it, please share it with people you know who would dig it!
We will return at the end of 2024 for more Sword & Sorcery News. Thank you for reading Just The Axe, Ma’am! —KB
