By their very nature, museum pieces - whether they be statues, busts or portraits - call for inherent dignity, a sense of power and self-importance, and a kind of transcendent visionary look in what must be a relatively neutral facial expression. Indeed, it should come across like the famous person stopped and posed for a picture, presenting himself in a mythic, more-than-mere-mortal way. Think of the museum pieces SS has given us on Batman and Superman (PFs), or the Hall of Fame-style life-size DC busts. Look at those expressions and the stances. Strength. Immortality. Dignity. Now look at the plastic action figures you had as a kid, designed for small-fry priorities, or even non-museum pieces made today with brilliant sculpting: wild action poses matched by psychotic expressions. It's a different message, Mose Harper, a less sophisticated sensation you're seeking than the one a legitimate museum piece simply must provide in order to actually be a museum piece. You've blurred the distinctions, using (if you'll forgive me) a bogus charge of excessive sexism to bolster what amounts to an absurd argument. In any legitimate incarnation, Red Sonja will have sexy curves, just as Superman will have attractive muscles. It's known as being on-model. More to the point, you're mistaking the museum-perfect stance and expression of this Sonja statue for the vapidity of a mindless fashion model, while your chosen route ("Watch out, boys, I'm an ass-kicker!") happens to be on the sophistication level of child-oriented toys and comics. The one-dimensional warrior babe is at your throat, and that's that. But who is this particular woman warrior, this Red Sonja, that she's earned a special place as an actual museum piece? She is staring upward, at the heavens... perhaps at the Goddess she serves and obeys, the one that has given her super-strength to defeat powerful enemies and hold their severed heads up high. And therein lies the difference between what you want and what Sideshow is thankfully giving us: Like all “grown-up” statues designed for a museum, this piece captures the fascinating conflict within the character by giving her a supposedly neutral expression that actually speaks volumes (paging Mona Lisa!). Sonja is spiritual, on a higher plane, in touch with something of incredible grace… yet she must slaughter enemies on a regular basis. That pain, that dichotomy, is conveyed in her expression. Fate’s been exceptionally unkind to this woman (her ‘career’ begins with her rape), yet she accepts it with courage, dignity and the magic of hope that even years of bloodshed cannot completely override. Fascinating implications for sophisticated adult thinkers, and SS caught it all. They fashioned a genuine museum piece that provides this character’s prerequisite sexiness and fierceness, but upgraded it with the very human, very compelling soul of Red Sonja as part of the equation. With a pedestal all set and waiting, September can’t come soon enough.
