page_title: Red Sonja
section_title: Bikini armor
hierarchical_section_title: Red Sonja / Bikini armor
caption_attribution_description: English: A cosplayer dressed as Red Sonja at the Image Comics booth at the New York Comic Con, October 15, 2011. This photo was created by Luigi Novi. It is not in the public domain, and use of this file outside of the licensing terms is a copyright violation. If you would like to use this image outside of the Wikimedia projects, you may do so, only if I am properly credited, either by linking the photograph to this page, or with an easily visible credit placed near the photo in each instance in which it is used. Please credit authorship as follows: &#160;© Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. Please maintain the original file name in all uses. You can see a gallery of some of my other photos here. If you have any questions, you can contact me by sending me an email or leaving a note at the bottom of my talk page.
context_page_description: Red Sonja is a fictional sword-and-sorcery comic-book heroine created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Barry Windsor-Smith for Marvel Comics in 1973, partially based on Robert E. Howard's characters Red Sonya of Rogatino and Dark Agnes de Chastillon.
  From 2005, the series was published by Dynamite Entertainment. In issue #34, the original Sonja was killed and replaced by a "reincarnation". The series was rebooted by writer Gail Simone in 2013, telling an altered version of Red Sonja's early life story via flashbacks. In 2017, Amy Chu began writing the series.
  Red Sonja has appeared in numerous editions both solo and together with Conan, as well as in some Marvel comics crossovers. A novelization was published in the 1980s written by David C. Smith and Richard L. Tierney, and in 1985, a feature film starring Brigitte Nielsen in the title role, Red Sonja, was released. There have also been television and animated adaptions.
  Sonja is well known for her bikini armor, consisting typically of scale mail covering only her waist and breasts.
context_section_description: Most artists depict Red Sonja wearing a very brief "chainmail bikini" costume of scale armor, usually with boots and gauntlets. As originally drawn by Barry Smith for "The Shadow of the Vulture" and "The Song of Red Sonja" in Conan the Barbarian issues 23 and 24 (1973), she did not have as full a figure and dressed a little more conservatively, in a long-sleeved mail shirt and short pants of red silk, a style that did not last long.
  As told by Roy Thomas in the introduction of Red Sonja Adventures Volume 1 (Dynamite Entertainment) Spanish artist Esteban Maroto submitted an uncommissioned illustration to him when he was editing the magazine Savage Sword of Conan where he redesigned the character and for the first time showed her wearing what would become her famous costume, the silver "metal bikini", which resembled other fantasy costumes that other Maroto heroines sported in the 1970s. This illustration had been printed for the first time in Jim Steranko's magazine Comixscene #5 in black and white. It was reprinted in Savage Sword of Conan #1, and in Marvel Treasury Edition #15 colored but poorly reproduced, and finally restored and colored by José Villarrubia as an alternative cover for the Dynamite Entertainment edition of Red Sonja #2. Maroto drew her in this costume for a double page spread illustration in Savage Tales #3 and then for her first solo adventure in Savage Sword of Conan #1, and John Buscema drew her in this costume in the same magazine. Buscema drew her again in this costume in issues 43, 44 and 48 of  Conan the Barbarian (1974) and Dick Giordano in the first issue of Marvel Feature vol. 2 (Nov. 1975) before Frank Thorne took over from issue #2 (Jan. 1976). The "bikini" proved popular, becoming well known through the paintings of Boris Vallejo and others.
caption: Cosplayer Mandy Caruso at the 2011 New York Comic Con dressed as Red Sonja
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