Red Sonja: The Black Tower

Red Sonja: Limited Series

by Frank Tieri, Cezar Razek (Artist)

What is the Black Tower? What startling mysteries does it contain within its walls? And most shockingly... how will its very existence cause the death of Red Sonja? When the Hyrkanian swordswoman rides into the city of Lur, she discovers that a mysterious ebon fortress has risen in the night, inspiring paranoia among the populace. While some fearful citizens are driven to murderous frenzy, others become fanatic devotees of the tower's unknown inhabitants. As the years go by, Sonja is always drawn back to this desperate place where unfeeling eyes gleam in dark corners. Who are the Soulless, and what terrible fate will they bring to the red-tressed heroine?

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fantasy, Sword and Sorcery, Fiction

97 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 22, 2015

Reviews

[Steve]

0 stars

I received this from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Quite possibly the worst comic I've ever read.

[Jason Ray Carney · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is fun sword and sorcery limited series. The art is rich and colorful and the violence depicted is visceral and engaging. The story is interesting but the dialog is banal. The character, Red Sonja, is a killing machine and driven by anger. She is not a complicated character, and that's o.k. for this. The villains--a band of evil human warlords and a group of evil robot warriors with fire swords--are neat. The sci-fi elements were weird and interesting. There's not much else to say other than this was fun. I got it for $1 at a library discarded book sale. It was worth the investment, and more so!

[Claire]

For SOME REASON hoopla has this title listed in the LGBTQ category and let me just say that this book has zero queer content. I'm so mad. I wanted to see Red Sonja be canonically wlw. I got stiffed, folks

[Chad · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very strange Red Sonja story where she fights robots from the future.

[Wayne McCoy · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Red Sonja: The Black Tower' is about a character that is popular in comics again, but this story feels like a bit of a set back.

In the city of Lur, a mysterious black tower has emerged, and we are told that it's existence will cause the death of Red Sonja. Before it does, she will have to deal with some idiot men who need a lesson. Unfortunately, she leaves one alive and he vows his revenge. You know that will come back to haunt her. We see the town over the years as chaos reigns and a strange religion crops up worshiping the tower. Will Sonja die at the hands of the Black Tower?

This was a gimmicky story with a gimmicky twist. Also, it brought in another genre that didn't really work for me with the story. The art is the shining light on this work. We've had some sharp, smart stories about Red Sonja lately, but, unfortunately, this wasn't one of them.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Diamond Book Distributors, Dynamite Entertainment, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

[Kenneth · Rating 1 out of 5]

Red Sonja is hard to get right. This was terrible. There wasn't enough time to develop the very unoriginal idea into something with depth. And the bikini bugs me more every day. It was the first comic I'd read on my phone with the kindle app, and that wasn't terrible, though. So the experiment failed, but not completely.

[Burgoo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really rather disappointing. For completists only.

http://fedpeaches.blogspot.com/2016/0...

[Timo · Rating 5 out of 5]

What fun this was! Stupid, yes, but fun. And fast also. A good read with all its robots, time traveling and wanking around with swords.

[Luana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun little ode to Métal Hurlant (aka Heavy Metal for u anglo RUBEZ), in which a mysterious Black Tower appears out of nowhere one day in a mid-sized town and the strange denizens it ejects are immediately treated to Hyborian hospitality (attempted assault/murder). A visiting Sonja saves who she can, but the visitors retreat back into the tower, which mysteriously closes up again. A cult arises around the structure, and the four issues that this miniseries consists of jump ahead in time every episode to see how the town evolves.

It goes to... some wild places! This is essentially a big Twilight Zone episode of a Sonja story, and frankly I was there for it. The writer, Frank Tieri, seemed vaguely familiar, and it turns out I'd read the miniseries "Harley Quinn and her Gang of Harleys" by him, which was fun as well. The covers are done by legendary Harley artist Amanda Conner, as well (unfortunately not the interior art, which is fine, but not Conner level).

[Ocean · Rating 2 out of 5]

Engages in a lot of storytelling tropes that I hate, including making the entire story just... not happen through a time travel thing. It also told the story more like an overview rather than an actual story. Too ambitious for the time it had to tell the story, while at the same time largely uninteresting. Had a couple neat moments, but not really worth it in the end.

[David J Motta · Rating 2 out of 5]

Huh

Do you read Red Sonja and Conan because of all the lightsaber wielding robots and laser guns and time travel? Me neither. What were they thinking with this one? They completely missed the point of the Hyborian Age.

[Ned Leffingwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wacky, over the top story and I loved every minute of it. We have all of the Red Sonja tropes, such as people getting their limbs sliced off and huge battles. This was a fun read. Recommended for fans of pulp sword and sorcery action.

[Mackenzie Melo · Rating 4 out of 5]

It takes time, but they kill her

I really enjoyed this book. Although we have the feeling that we've seen very similar storylines, I had never read one that happened in the Hyperborean realms and age. I recommend it.

[Chrissie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Liked the artwork...but the story felt like it was missing something. And there were sections that felt like they weren't thought through which was frustrating.

[Alexandre · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lol so bad, light saber, blasters, dragon ridding, Darkseid shows up, ... Just a complete mess.

[Tomas · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is worst Red Sonja comic book I have ever read and one of the stupidest comic books I have ever read. The story goes like this:

Black Tower appears out of nowhere and robots start going out of the tower murdering people. Sonja sees this and organized great resistance and everybody gets killed and she gets decapitated and mounted on the wall of the ruler of the robots and tower. Sometime later comes another Sonja (the book does not give a shit telling you how did she come to be there. She says something like: I am maybe her, or her clone, or even her reincarnation I do not know) fucks the mighty lord till he tells her that he is not all-mighty god but in fact he is a time traveler who SOMEHOW got there with robots . So new Sonja decapitates him goes back in time and kill his mother.. Tadaaa the end

Art is ok but I am not interested in only nice pictures I need story. And this story looks like has been done in 15 minutes.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love the character of Red Sonja. But I wasn't really into this version of her.

I'm not sure what it was. Maybe it was the whole idea of the story. Maybe the writing. It's hard to put my finger on it.

Everything happened so quickly. It was like an epic story was forced to fit into a short story. It jumps right into the action, but it feels like sequences were cut out of a film. The whole thing felt rushed - the story, the writing, even the art. Almost as if they didn't have enough time to tell the story, or put the whole story together.

And the dialogue is a bit tedious and cliche.

And the whole storyline? It just didn't seem to fit a Red Sonja story.

Recommended maybe only for the most die-hard red Sonja fan.

Thanks to NetGalley, Diamond, and IDW for a copy in return for an honest review.

[Theediscerning · Rating 3 out of 5]

A firm three stars, even if, while this is a snappy and fun little read, it is little – slight, almost. And while it tries to do something different with the character, format and whole genre of Red Sonja, what it brings to the table doesn't always work. Well done to it for jumping great gaps of years at a time, and not feeding the audience every little detail necessary for the story. The artwork is as you'd expect – although sometimes the splash pages are a little unnecessary and add to the feeling of lack where script and plot are concerned. Would this team be able to carry on replacing Simone for a long time? Who knows, but they certainly have enough to immerse you in these lands once more for a weird little fantasy piece.

[Keith Irwin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This collects the issues of Red Sonja: The Black Tower into one single volume. This story has everything you want in a good Tom Baker Doctor Who episode: false gods, evil robots, time travelers. Except that this is a Red Sonja story. And, honestly, the whole thing just feels weird and discordant. I mean, there are Red-Sonja-ish bits to the story, especially at the start, but, on the whole, it's just strange. The art is fine, but the plot is strange and the pacing is uneven. It just doesn't feel like a Red Sonja story at all. And if I imagine that it's some generic red-haired warrior woman instead, then the story doesn't really get any better. This whole book just felt odd and pointless.

[Annice22 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Borrowed from Publiser/NetGalley for an honest review.

This may not be the most eloquent way of stating this but here it goes. This story absolutely stinks! It's was so poorly written and convoluted. It was a bad mix of Star Wars, Doctor Who and other generic elements of sci-fi which made it even more weird because it was in a Red Sonja story.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Every cliche storytelling trope you could imagine, but worse because nobody would ever dare use them. The only thing that saved this book was the villains were somewhat interesting. Except for the very end when we learn this amazing dark god figure is just a time traveling bro. The artwork was worthy, which is the only reason I gave this that second star.

[Patrick · Rating 1 out of 5]

The best aspect of this trade was the Amanda Conner covers. Pretty um.. bad. Just blah. Weak story, art was okay. It was like "Men bad, Women helpless victims" the whole way, poor storytelling as whole.

I received an advanced copy of this from NetGalley.com and the publisher.

[Amanda Majasaari · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did love this new book of Red Sonja. It was really different one than earlier. And the illustration art work with combat scenes was really a pleasure to go through.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

This started out as a fun mixing of sword/sorcery and SciFi with Sonja doing her best Nick Fury impression. Unfortunately, the ending made no sense at all.

[Lindsay · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's not quite one of those "so bad it's good" comics. More like in the area of vatderheck? But you read anyway because it's just so unbelievably bad. xD

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

All those fights, blood, gore, rape attempt, and castration, but somehow a curse word is a shade too far?