Redhead Sonya

Red Sonja was invented by Roy Thomas, screenwriter of the film " Conan the Destroyer " and the animated film " Fire and Ice ." The name was taken from the story of Robert E. Howard, “The Shadow of Valgara, ” whose main character is also called Red Sonya , and they changed one letter in the name - Y to J. But the character has nothing more to do with this story ^{[1] [2]} - in the story we are talking about Cossacks fighting Turkish rule, and his main character, respectively, is a Ukrainian Cossack girl from Rogatin (from there her main rival and sister Roksolana , a real historical character, the sultan’s wife Suleiman). Roy Thomas created the archetypal image of an Amazon in an armored bikini, which became both an object of imitation and a subject of ridicule and parodies, and placed the heroine in the Highboron era - the setting of "Conan", invented by R. Howard. It is also known that Roy Thomas, for the prototype of Sonya, took another red-haired girl-character of Robert Howard - Agnes de Chastillon ^[3] .

The issue of authorship came up sharply in 2007, when Paradox, which owns Howard’s legacy rights, sued Red Sonja LLC for using a name from Howard’s books for its character. The court ended with a settlement, by which Paradox recognized the rights of its rivals to the Red Sonja trademark (via J) ^[4] .

According to the background, Sonya is a resident of the Girkan steppes. The robbers burned her house, killed her family, and she herself was brutally raped. Having found the strength to survive, Sonya devoted her whole life to revenge and training to become the perfect warrior.

Sonya first appears in the Marvel comics about Conan as a minor character in 1973. Since 1975, Marvel launched a line of comics about Sonya herself. After the 34th issue, the authors “killed” Sonya and restarted the series with the new Sonya, who is a distant descendant of the previous one.

Several times, Sonya appeared in the comics of "All Marvel Stars", where she had to meet even with the characters of the modern Marvel Universe - Spider-Man and X-Men .

In 2005, Marvel sold the Sony comic book license to the new Dynamite Entertainment publisher, which launched an extensive series of comic books about heroin. For this series Dynamite in the same year received the Diamond Comics Distributors award as the best new publisher. For 2012, a series from Dynamite continues to be released.

In Russia, the Red Saga Saga was published by the North-West Press from 1998 to 2003. For five years, the publisher has published 18 books ^[5] .

Novels

Novels written by David Smith and Richard L. Tierney:

• The Ring of Ikribu (1981)
• The Night of the Demon (1982)
• “When Hell Laughs” (1982)
• Enditor's Daughter (1982)
• “Against the Prince of Hell” (1983)
• The Star of Rock (1983)

Films

• " Red Sonia " (1985) directed by Richard Fleischer. In the role of Sonya - Brigitte Nielsen , in the role of her companion Calidor - Arnold Schwarzenegger . The film was shot in the wake of the success of films about Conan, but failed at the box office.
• " Conan the Adventurer " (television series, 2000). In the role of Sonya Angelica Bridges . Sonya appears in one of the series, here she has a different biography, in which there is no rape.
• In the late 2000s and early 2010s, director Simon West worked on the project for the new film adaptation of Sony, which Rose McGone was supposed to play. The film never saw the light, and McGone eventually played another character in the remake of Conan the Barbarian (2011) .

Redhead Sonya won first place in the list of “100 Sexiest Women in Comics” by Comics Buyer's Guide ^[6] .