On a normal day I’d be extremely wary of a Red Sonja parody from an all-male team of comic creators. The potential for cringe (not to mention rusty chainmail bikini jokes) could be extremely high. That said, when you learn that said R-rated series comes from the writer of The Boys, and his frequent artist collaborator, well, then you have my attention.
Out today is Issue 3 of Sword & Sorcery themed Babs from Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows, a six-part miniseries published by Ahoy Comics. And yes, there are scale mail jokes in the first issue of Babs, but the reality is a highly entertaining table flip of fantasy genre tropes, with a good right hook of social satire – delivered in contemporary, sometimes-very-colourful English. That is unless Babs happens to cross paths with a pretentious knight who can only speak in the most convoluted high fantasy lingo.
It helps the series that Babs herself is such a fun character: a hot mess barbarian (mis)adventurer who ran away from the Princess Academy when she was 12, and now roams around a fantasy universe looking for her next get-rich-quick scheme, paired with her trusty steed and smart-mouthed talking sword Barry. The thing is, while she’s a viciously adept fighter (one of the best things about the comic is its creative action scenes and choreography), Babs has the worst luck in choosing quests, typically racking up enemies, and bar tabs wherever she goes.
Where the social commentary primarily comes into play in Babs is through the book’s lead antagonists: a set of “very angry, very white knights” who function under a crest suspiciously similar to the SS insignia; and a band of incel orcs and outcasts ranting conspiracies about how the Deep Realm keeps them down, and raging that Babs is an inferior copy of a male hero. Of course, our heroine has no time for either of these groups, subjecting them to a series of satisfying smackdowns, when she isn’t pondering her loser status or trying to scrounge together some coin. Strangely, nobody wants to purchase her stolen Dick Enlargement Potion.
Ennis and Burrows’s comic is subversive, sharp and frequently laugh-out-loud funny, and it always feels like its own thing instead of, say, a transcribed Dungeons & Dragons session. If you’re at all tickled by the idea of cursed skeleton lords asking for haircare advice, adventurers paying reparations for running over leprechauns, and rulers getting into trouble with goblins for donning greenface in college, you’ll have a great time reading Babs.
Issues 1 through 3 of Babs are out now, priced at around $3.99 each, and you can purchase them digitally here.
The next part of the arc, Issue #4, is set for release on 20 November. Meanwhile, if you prefer an all-in-one read, the collected Babs is currently lined up for 11 March 2025.
