Review – Altered States: Red Sonja (one-shot) (Dynamite)

Publisher: Dynamite
Writer: Brandon Jerwa
Artist: Juanan Ramirez
Release Date: 11th March, 2015

Following on from last week’s fairly lacklustre Vampirella: Altered States one-shot, it’s now the turn of everyone’s favourite chainmail bikini-clad warrior to get the ‘fish out of water’ treatment. This issue introduces us to Sonja Majeure, a mild-mannered museum employee who finds transported to the Hyborian Age via a magic sword when an ancient evil that has been transported to her museum awakens with destruction on its mind.

Okay, so the actual story is a more than a little muddy, with a lot of the premise essentially boiling down to “because… magic”. The dynamic of the mild-mannered woman being transformed into the chainmail bikini-clad Sonja is interesting enough, but the flat dialogue and clumsy execution manages to rob the story of any real drama or emotional investment.

The art is solid if unspectacular, and lacks detail in some of the key panels. There are some nice moments along the way, it has to be said, but for the most part this is very much ‘fantasy comics by numbers’, with some fairly jarring colour work (which, I’ll readily admit may be a by-product of the review PDF I was reading) only adding to the problem.

The whole thing actually has a bit of a ‘Night at the Museum’ vibe to it, as an ancient evil awakens only to be taken down by an innocuous museum employee – albeit one who finds herself transformed into a red-headed She-Devil. However, without committing to either the serious drama or the light-hearted comedy style, the end result is a comic that can’t seem to decide what tone it’s actually going for – and which comes across more than a little muddled as a result.

Another swing and another miss for Dynamite’s ‘Altered States’ series then, I’m afraid to say. Plus, at the end of the day, when you consider that so many classic ‘Elseworld’ and ‘What If?’ tales have seen us visiting intriguing alternative worlds where much-loved characters have lived or died and existing events were twisted by unfamiliar actions, I’m not sure “what if a museum employee was transformed into Red Sonja… for a bit?” is really a question worth answering.

Rating: 2/5.

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