Red Sonja 5
This issue follows up from the last one, in which Red Sonja vowed to find the leader of the Lake People, who was imprisoned in the Singing Tower (just called “the tower” last issue). She is still accompanied by Mikal, the mysterious traveler from issues three and four, who, rather remarkably, has not yet tried to seduce her. The issue opens with the two of them hiding behind their horses and watching a procession of warriors in the middle of the night.
Now, if I wanted to trick someone into thinking a road is unoccupied, I wouldn’t leave a pair of saddled horses in plain sight. (“Hey, let’s hide behind the biggest clue we can find!”) Curiously, none of the riders seem to the notice the horses standing just to their right (no doubt experiencing the same lack of peripheral vision suffered by Imperial Storm Troopers and every single Doctor Who villain).
Of course, Sonja and Mikal are so pre-occupied with hiding in plain sight that they fail to notice the approach of the truands, who are basically forest-dwelling dwarves. Yes, this issue, Red Sonja fights a gang of unarmed dwarves. Unarmed dwarves dressed like pixies. Because, honestly, at this point the chain mail bikini isn’t politically incorrect enough.
Well, it should be no surprise that she easily defeats the little people, keeping one under foot for questioning. She asks him only one question: Where can she find the Singing Tower? His answer is that she should follow the dark riders. The dark riders she was following before the truands attacked. Meaning that the attack really served no narrative purpose other than to fill two pages. Ah well.
So Sonja and Mikal catch up with the riders, who seem to be moving just slow enough to make following them easy. Eventually, they lead our heroes into a valley, where they discover that (best Admiral Ackbar voice) it’s a trap. They are easily captured and Mikal is taken away. Sonja is taken to a bell tower, which is apparently the capital building of Bor Ti-Ki, the City of Bells. If you’re thinking the bell tower is the Singing Tower, Red Sonja makes the same mistake. But this is apparently a completely different tower.
Early on in Sean Howe’s book-length history Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, the reader’s imagination is spurred by a throwaway anecdote: in 1937, New York magazine publisher Martin Goodman and his wife planned to return from a trip to Europe aboard the Hindenburg — on what would turn out to be the final tragic flight of the German dirigible, which ended with a terrifying aerial explosion and fire that led to the deaths of 36 people. Goodman, as it happened, was too late to get tickets and took a plane instead. You can’t help but wonder, though. What if he’d died then, before he’d expanded his magazine line to include comics? Before he’d hired his nephew Stanley to work in the office and do fill-in bits of writing? What if Marvel Comics, the subject of Howe’s book, had been stillborn? What would have been different in the development of comics, of popular culture, of the North American imagination? Maybe everything. Maybe nothing.
The Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story was first given out in 2009. The category was a nice idea, especially given the increased prominence of comics in the media landscape, but I have to admit that up to this year, I’ve been underwhelmed by the choice of winners. Or, more precisely, winner, singular: Phil and Kaja Foglio’s webcomic Girl Genius took the award three times straight. I don’t dislike the comic, but from what I’ve read, I’d be hard-pressed to identify anything in it that makes it worth a major award ahead of any number of series — Hellboy or Mouse Guard or Wednesday Comics or RASL or All-Star Superman or you name it. After their third win, though, the Foglios announced they would decline to accept a nomination for the next year, in the interest of helping to establish the validity of the award. So the 2012 Hugo went to another title: 
