Savage Tales: A Red Sonja Halloween Special

Savage Tales featuring Red Sonja tells a story titled simply “The Tower of Wigur-Nomadene”, which reveals that Sonja has visited the great tower once before her most recent attempt in the Red Sonja ongoing series. This Halloween Special issue certainly has a dark twist, but it was considerably tame for a Halloween Red Sonja comic.

While being tame isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I couldn’t help but want more out of Savage Tales: A Red Sonja Halloween Special. It was interesting to follow Sonja in her early years, but her characterization felt shockingly different from anything else we’ve seen of her recently. This is strange because Mark Russell is writing a very different take on the character in her ongoing series. However, in the Red Sonja: Birth of the She-Devil miniseries that just wrapped up, we see Sonja’s early years as much more fierce than what we find in this issue.

Sonja begging and bargaining for this man that she knew ultimately just feels too drastic of a change for her character to really pull me in.

She-Devil she is not in Savage Tales.

Instead, we find a character lost in her youthful emotion and all too willing to abide by immediate gratification. This form of selfishness eventually comes back to haunt her as she forces Jovan to continue robbing against his best judgement. The end is dramatic, but as is often the case in one-shots, it just proves to be somewhat inconsequential.

The visuals are different than what we’ve seen so far, but I actually quite enjoyed them. The sorcerers in the tower shrouded in heavy blacks give them a haunting silhouette and Sonja herself is both powerful and full of expression. While it’s not the most impressive artwork on the shelves today, it does enough to keep you interested, not unlike the story itself.

If you can manage your expectations, there is some fun to be had with Savage Tales: A Red Sonja Halloween Special if only from the dramatic twist at the end. But for fans of the ongoing series and those looking for a spooky Halloween story, this issue might come up just a bit short.