What eBay Hath Wrought 112: Breygent Red Sonja Sketch Card by Jason Crosby

If you like swords and sorcery in your comic books, there are two big names out there. The main guy is Conan the Barbarian, and the main woman is Red Sonja. There have been other attempts at barbarian comics, but those are the only two that have really stood the test of time. I wanted a Red Sonja sketch card, but I had a few criteria that made it somewhat difficult to find the right one. I wanted one that was clearly identifiable as Red Sonja, which meant one that showed off her trademark red hair and chainmail bikini. I wanted one that was well-drawn, which is a pretty subjective thing, I suppose. And I wanted a sketch card that emphasized her warlike nature over just being some cheesecake model who happens to be wearing chainmail.

Eventually I settled on this sketch by Jason Crosby from Breygent's Women of Dynamite set. This one checks all of my blocks, and I would imagine that if there were a real Red Sonja out there in the world she would look a lot like this. Actually, she would probably have the sense to wear a few more clothes, but if a loincloth is good enough for Conan I guess the chainmail is good enough for her. I like the colors on this one and really couldn't be happier with it. A lot of the sketches in the set are very short on color, and to be honest a lot of the sketches in the set are just butt-awful. This one met all of my criteria and is well-drawn. It's cartoony without being overly simplistic.

I looked around at some of Crosby's other work. It looks like when it comes to sketch cards he sticks mostly to horror topics. He's got a lot of Mars Attacks! sketches out there, some Cthulhu stuff, and his recent Marvel and DC comic book sketches made my mind explode. You can see a lot of it on this thread in the Blowout Cards forum dedicated to his art. Looking up all of his sketches while researching this post makes me want to go out and get all of it. But that would be crazy. He had a Rocket Raccoon and Groot card that sold for $305.00 recently. That's about 20,000 leagues out of my league. But I am pretty happy to have this Red Sonja sketch, and hopefully I can pull more of his work from DC or Marvel packs down the road.