Black Gate

The story opens with Red Sonja and Suumaro in the talons of a giant peacock, being flown away from the ruins of the sorceress Apah Alah’s honeymoon suite. It was explained (though not very clearly) last issue, but to catch up with the story (and the series in general), all you have to know is that a lot of crazy things happen to Red Sonja and she usually ends up stabbing most of those crazy things. Oh, and she’s blind after being covered in the blood of a peacock-blowing man-stallion (seriously, not half as sick as you’re thinking).

If you’re honest with yourself, you know how you’d react to being blinded, then clutched in the talon of a giant peacock. I’d be terrified. Red Sonja’s first line this issue: “I’d hoped that when death arrived for me – I’d at least be able to see well enough to spit in its face!” And that’s really all you have to know about Red Sonja.

The giant bird drops them on the upper section of the palace, where they are greeted by a bald woman with a crossbow named Narca. It turns out Narca is angry at the bird for trying to take Sonja and Suumaro out of the palace (even though the bird wasn’t taking them out of the palace, just the crumbling part of it). So she shoots the giant peacock with her crossbow, then has her army of albino gorillas drag its corpse to a giant vat of blood, where it is dumped.

Why is she so mad about Sonja and Suumaro’s escape attempt? Because she’s trapped there too. In her own wing of the palace. With an army of gorillas. And a blood pit that she uses for demonic summoning. And this isn’t even the dumbest prison set-up I’ve seen in the series (see issue two).

Sonja can’t see Narca, but Suumaro tells her that she’s “purely evil,” which he seems to conclude from the fact that she’s bald and shot a big bird. Then she shoots a second giant peacock and has it tossed into the blood pit as well. Some demon is apparently very thirsty.

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So this story opens with Red Sonja and the inexplicably-still-unslain Suumaro on a reconnaissance mission. They’re traveling by raft into the least-fortified part of Skranos to gather intelligence on its fortifications. After I wrote that sentence, I realized that if they already know what part of the city is least-fortified, then haven’t they already scoped out the fortifications?

Never mind. They never make it into the city this issue anyway. Before the first page is turned, Sonja, Suumaro, and the retinue of soldiers they brought with them are attacked by winged demon-people. Suumaro is all-too-familiar with the creatures, saying that his sorceress mother, Apah Alah, created them as guardians. Sonja asks what she used them to guard.

A better question might be what kind of spy mission includes the leader of the resistance movement, a woman who drunkenly challenged the entire army to kill her, a dozen armed men, and their horses? How exactly were they expecting to slip in unnoticed?

Again, never mind. We’ve got harpies to fight. Well, for a page and a half. The harpies (or whatever) kill all the other men, as well as the horses. (Have I mentioned how badly horses get treated in this series?) Leaving Red Sonja and Suumaro on the shore of a forest. Capping the trunk of one of the largest trees is a castle.

Yeah, a castle is growing out of a tree. It’s just there, by the shore between Skranos and the rebel encampment. And nobody noticed a castle growing out of a tree up until now.

And since this Red Sonja, you guessed it. She freaks out for one panel, then moves on. Because mildly freaked out is just how she’s learned to function.

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When we last left Red Sonja, she was about to be hung for killing some guy twenty issues ago. Last month, Oryx, a mammoth-riding bully, decided to turn her in to the victim’s family for a reward. Apparently, he opted for the dead option in dead or alive.

This issues begins with Sonja managing a few more insults and even a good kick before she’s cut free of the noose by Suumaro, Oryx’s brother and local outcast.

His motive? Why, he wants to make Red Sonja his wife, of course. Poor Suumaro.

So after a rooftop fight with a couple of thugs, Sonja and Suumaro (oh, both their names start with S – they could use the same monogrammed towels) are out of the fort and into the surrounding hills, where they find his military camp. It seems that Summaro wasn’t the only one cast out of the fort. He apparently sneaks back in every now and again to gather intelligence against the day when his army takes it back. And after watching Red Sonja fight, he invites her to join his army.

Thing is, Red Sonja’s been around the block a few times. She knows how this thing goes. And she’s met her share of guys claiming to be impressed by her prowess in battle, when in fact they’re just trying to get her out of her chain mail. She asks Suumaro point-blank if he’s got a wife and his answer is, “I’ve got several … but that is of little consequence to me at this moment.”

Red flag. Two red flags, actually. Red flag one? He’s got multiple wives. Sonja’s just escaped the noose for murdering one polygamist and this could be a terrible trend. Red flag two? His wives are of little consequence to him.

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When we last left our heroine, she’d just watched a crazy wizard get killed by a bell. Deciding to get out of the bell tower before anyone started asking her questions, she stole the nearest horse and made her way to the Singing Tower, which was more or less next door to the bell tower. Her traveling companion of the last couple issues, Mikal, is being held prisoner there and if crazy wizards and killer bells are in the tower where they keep guests, who knows what’s in the tower where they keep prisoners.  And we’re off on another psychedelic sword & sorcery adventure.

On page one, we get our first glimpse of the Singing Tower and it is certainly … suggestive. A thick cylinder with a bulbous tip, the tower’s shape is more than a little reminiscent of, oh, let’s say a mushroom. A mushroom surrounded by enticing flowers whose slimy nectar Sonja is compelled to smear across her half-naked body in a state of pure ecstasy. Until she passes out from the sheer pleasure of the act.

Mushroom.

Her unconscious body is picked up by a pair of insect people (because, really, why not insect people?) and taken inside the tower. Before they can do much more than lay her out on a stone slab, Sonja’s awake again and drawing a dagger. The insect men vomit silk onto themselves until they’re wrapped in protective cocoons. So far, this is more or less a typical day in the life for the Hyrkanian harridan.

And then she sees a giant woman tied to a wall. Upon closer inspection, it’s obvious that the giantess is tied to the lattice-work of the wall by her own over-grown hair. When Sonja tries to free her from her own hair, she finds that it grows back faster than she can cut it.

Not that she has much of a chance to cut, since a swarm of tiny bee people attack her, stinging her back to unconsciousness, then forcing her mouth open to feed her more of the nectar that had knocked her out earlier. When she wakes up once again, she finds that her hair has begun to grown like the giantess, binding her to the same lattice-work wall.

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Last issue, Red Sonja competed in the Games of Gita, won, then killed the Queen of Athos. This issue, she’s still hanging around the city. Apparently, the queen wasn’t that popular. So her new friend, Mikal, is showing her the sights, which include a dark lake infested with shambling actors. “(T)hese strange beings, whose limbs are an eldritch mixture of beast and fowl and lowly reptile.” They slowly make their way to the aptly named “Theatre of Monsters.”

Walking into the Theatre, Sonja finds that the performances consist of monsters, who are clearly monsters wearing human masks, performing surreal renditions of standard plays. Of course, the actors behave with more dignity than the howling human audience around them. At one point, they invite Red Sonja to join their performance in exchange for a purse of gold.

Since Sonja is perpetually broke, she accepts the offer and takes the stage. But since it’s pretty much her fate to be perpetually broke, the offer of gold was a ruse and the monster performers try to kill her immediately. Several monster-corpses later, their leader is begging for mercy and offering to explain what just happened.

At this point, Mikal joins Sonja, having apparently been using the bathroom while she was fighting for her life on stage. The two of them are escorted to the lake, where the waters are parted Moses-style so that they can follow the monsters down to their underwater crystal city. There, she is told the story of how the monsters are descended from aliens whose ship crashed in the lake. After adopting water-breathing forms, they began to interbreed with various Earth animals (um, yuck) until the succeeding generations were the monsters that now occupy the city. Apparently, their leader was captured by the people of Athos and they are forced to perform as circus entertainers in order to ensure that he stays alive.

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Honestly, I’ve tried twice to summarize “The Demon in the Maze,” and I just can’t figure out how. It’s a psychedelic mess of gonzo insanity. It reads as if co-writers Roy Thomas and Clara Noto just switched off writing pages without any idea of where the story was heading or how it would end. The whole thing is plenty of fun; but at the end, I still can’t figure it out.

It starts with Sonja finally reaching Venzia (which she’s been heading towards since Marvel Feature 6). The first thing she sees when she’s in sight of its famous canal is two trading ships crashing into one another and sinking. Even though the ships are less a minute’s swim from shore on either side of the canal, none of the sailors survive the crash.

Sonja doesn’t really have time to consider this mystery before she happens upon a woman being attacked by three bandits. She easily kills the trio in less than a page, but a fourth bandit, hiding in the shadows, knocks her unconscious and drops her to an underground mirror maze. The mirrors mess with her head to the point where she first hallucinates herself as a withered old woman (rendered only a little hilarious by the fact that she’s still wearing the chain mail bikini), then watches as her arms transform into snakes that begin to strangle her. Realizing that it’s an illusion, Sonja calms down and lets her mind “go limp,” at which point a passage out of the maze opens up. She leaves the maze and walks into the plot of the story.

An old man (who is never named) lies dying on the ground and explains that the underground chamber is the prison for an evil wizard (also unnamed) who wants to rule the world. Apparently, the chamber is also the prison of a demon (once again, unnamed) who can only be freed by a human hand. But not any human hand (otherwise, his cell-mate the evil wizard would just free him). The demon can only be freed by a human of exceptionally strong will (translation: the evil wizard is a wimp). The demon created the mirror maze as a test: anyone with a will strong enough to see through its illusions would have a will strong enough to free the demon. The fact that the maze is littered with bones implies that a lot of other women have been trapped down here.

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