With the recent news that Marvel has regained the license to publish comic books about Conan the Barbarian, fans have thought back to all of the great adventures that Marvel released starring the character over the years. However, some of their most famous Conan stories are those that involve Red Sonja, who debuted in Conan the Barbarian #23 by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith (then going by just Barry Smith).

With Marvel regaining the Conan license beginning in 2018, fans would surely like to see some new Red Sonja comics from the publisher. The only problem is, Red Sonja's rights are not included in the Conan deal. Read on to learn how a character who debuted in an issue of Conan the Barbarian would not be included in a deal to license Conan the Barbarian.

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Roy Thomas had been writing the adventures of Conan for over two years when he noticed that the stories really did not have much in the way of a female protagonist to match Conan. There were plenty of female characters in Robert E. Howard stories, but they existed mostly as plot devices. They were either damsels in distress for Conan to rescue or they were romantic figures there as, in effect, prizes for Conan when he succeeded on an adventure. Thomas went through Howard's older works and found the short story “The Shadow of the Vulture." In that story, there was a character called Red Sonya of Rogatino. The story was set in the 16th Century, and not the age of barbarians like Conan. Still, Thomas was inspired enough to use the character as a basis for a new character, Red Sonja, who would debut in Conan the Barbarian #23 as part of an adaptation of "Shadow of the Vulture."

Here is how she looked when she debuted...

The character was not yet wearing her iconic chain mail bikini, but fans still got a whole lot of sex appeal out of Smith's depiction of the character in the next issue, Smith's final issue of the series...

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Artist Esteban Maroto sent in a pin-up of Red Sonja to Marvel and Maroto reduced the amount of clothing worn by Sonja. That pin-up was published in Comixscene magazine. It got Maroto the assignment to draw a double-page splash in the black and white magazine Savage Tales #3...

The pin-up inspired Roy Thomas to adopt the costume design for Red Sonja in the comics.

In the first issue of Savage Sword of Conan, the black and white comic magazine spin-off of Conan the Barbarian, Red Sonja debuted her new look in the first story in the magazine, where she teamed up with Conan once more...

That issue also included Sonja's very first solo adventure, with art by Maroto, who found himself hired for the gig after his unsolicited pin-up!

It also published his original pin-up...

Conan comic books continued to be very popular and Red Sonja also gained a lot of fans. Note that, while Thomas ostensibly adapted her from the Red Sonya character in "Shadow of the Vulture," she was truly a new character. Thomas invented her back story and her personality out of whole cloth.

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A Red Sonja feature was used to launch a new Marvel try-out magazine, Marvel Feature (where different characters would get a chance at a solo feature in the hopes of graduating into their own title) in 1975...

Sure enough, Red Sonja then did receive her own bi-monthly series in 1977...

Oddly enough, for whatever reason, Red Sonja never quite sold as well as Conan. Her solo series started strong, but sales lagged a bit and it was canceled in 1979. She got a second bi-monthly series in 1983, but that, too, ended after just two years. However, while she was not having a ton of success in the comics, she was having more success in another medium - film. It was here, then, that the reason for Red Sonja not being part of the Conan deal is explained...

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In 1985, a follow-up to Arnold Schwarzenegger's hit Conan films was released, called Red Sonja, with Schwarzenegger playing a Conan substitute called Lord Kalidor and Brigitte Nielsen taking on the role of the She-Devil with a sword, Red Sonja...

While the film did not prove to be that big of a hit, it did lead to the Howard Estate to spin the character off into her own company, Red Sonja, LLC.

RELATED: New Red Sonja Movie In the Works

This was presumably done to make it easier to license the character separately from Conan for stuff like posters, animated series and things like that.

Marvel continued to have the license to the character, though, until they gave it up soon before they gave up the Conan license in 2000.

However, that proved to be a problem later on when Conan Properties, LLC was purchased by a different company, leaving the rights to Red Sonja now separated from Conan.

This led to Red Sonja, LLC cutting a deal with Dynamite to make Red Sonja comic books, which have been published by Dynamite since 2005 (after briefly licensing the Red Sonja rights to another comic book company in the late 1990s)

Currently, Dynamite's Red Sonja series (launched in 2017) is written by Amy Chu and it is a real blast...

This, though, is why Marvel did not gain the rights to Red Sonja when they made their new deal to re-acquire the rights to make Conan comic books. If Marvel wants to include Red Sonja, they would have to make a separate deal with Red Sonja, LLC.

Until then, Marvel will be unable to re-visit that amazing Marvel Team-Up story where Mary Jane Watson transformed into Red Sonja...

Well, of course, unless they do another crossover, like they did in 2008...