Red Sophia

Cerebus #10, June/July 1979
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from an interview at The A.V. Club, 31 March 2004)

Red Sonja was the hot comic book at the time, beautifully written, penciled, inked, and lettered by Frank Thorne about a female Conan-type who wouldn't surrender sexually to any man unless he defeated her in battle. When I did my parody, Red Sophia, I extrapolated that this poor, magnificent warrior woman was probably getting unbelievably horny waiting for someone to come along who could beat her. It does seem more resonant today now that the "ballsier" feminists, much to their consternation, seem to be having difficulty finding men who are interested in - or capable of - going mano a mano with them. At the time, it just seemed a funnier, racier version of the real thing. When Red Sophia whips off her chain-mail bikini top and says "What do you think of these?" and Cerebus deadpans, "They'd probably heal nicely if you'd stop wearing the chain-mail bikini." I just hoped that it would sell enough copies that I could keep going. It wasn't until two years in, when I switched to the monthly schedule and chose to attempt to do 300 issues, that that stopped being the primary motivation and switched to "How do you fill 300 issues of a comic book with something besides just sight gags and wordplay?"