GAIL SIMONE reinvents RED SONJA in a new novel

Red hair, a chainmail bikini, and crazy sword skills…what more do you need in a hero?! On November 19, fan-favorite writer Gail Simone will release her first action-packed fantasy novel, Red Sonja: Consumed, featuring the she-devil with a sword for a new generation. 

At a special panel at NYCC 2024, Simone, who has written the character for Dynamite, discussed this new tale for the legendary Hyrkania fighter.

Moderated by ELLE magazine’s Lauren Puckett-Pope, the panel focused on the new novel as well as Simone’s transition from prolific comic writer to prose author. Simone also shared that you don’t have to be a Sonja expert to enjoy the book.

“You can be a Red Sonja historian. You can know absolutely nothing about what’s going on and read this novel, and you’re not going to feel lost at all,” Simone explained. “The novel pays homage to her history and her character, but it does not follow it. It’s its own thing. It was never intended to be like anything else that has ever existed. That’s probably the hugest difference. But then from a creative standpoint, from a reader standpoint, in a novel, you can really get deeper into her character, and we really get to feel Sonja deeply in this novel. We get to feel her loneliness and how she got to where she is, where she only lives in the moment. We feel how she loves and what she thinks is unjust and how she deals with those problems. We follow her through all of that very closely.”

Simone continued, “When I write a comic, every panel is precious. I think about every little bit that ends up in that panel because there’s always so much room to tell a story there. In this, I could expand on that quite a lot and really ask the reader to bring their imagination with them.”

The writer shared that initially, she wasn’t a fan of the character and it took her mother’s love for the flame-haired swordswoman to change her mind. 

“Well, I wouldn’t say necessarily that I was a not fan. It’s just that in my experience with Red Sonja, I was seeing her airbrushed on the side of a stoner van. That just didn’t appeal to me at the time. Nick Barrucci, who is publisher for Dynamite Comics, and who also publishes the Red Sonja comics, asked me if I was interested in writing that book, and I said, No. He said, Well, we really would like you to. I was on the phone with him while my mom was sitting in the room. She said, What was that? I said, Well, they asked me if I wanted to write Red Sonja, and I said, I don’t think so. She said, What? You have to write Red Sonja. She’s my favorite.

My mom has red hair, too. I learned talking to her that it meant a lot to her to have this really strong female character with red hair that kicked ass. She just really identified with her in ways that I did not expect or had ever known before. I thought, Okay, no, I still don’t want to. She literally did the mom thing and nagged my phone and by text in every way she could for two weeks straight. I finally said, Okay, I’m going to write six issues for my mom. And that’s how it started. I think that was, I don’t even remember how many years ago it was, but I’m still writing Red Sonja.”