Not only must I preface my remarks by saying that I'm using the title of one of two stories as an umbrella for both, but also that the two stories involved are part of a larger mosaic of CONAN stories by the celebrated team of Roy Thomas and Barry Smith. I don't know if anyone has coined a formal name for these interrelated stories, but since they're related to Conan's participation in a city under siege, one might call it "The Siege of Makkalet." It was an ambitious multi-part story, and yet another of Marvel Comics' experiments with longer continuities like the Lee-Kirby "Inhumans Saga" and Steranko's Yellow Claw continuity.
The most mythic stories within the greater mosaic are the two related to Thomas and Smith's introduction of the sword-maiden Red Sonja to Conan's Hyborian era. At some point in the Mythcomics Project, I stated that I wouldn't consider simple adaptations of stories from other media as "mythcomics." However, even though one of the two stories considered here derives from Robert E. Howard's prose tale "The Shadow of the Vulture," Thomas and Smith ring in enough changes to the original tale that it's no longer a straight retelling. I've already included at least one derivative-yet-original mythcomic before this, when I analyzed George Perez's take on Hesiod's myth of Pandora.
Three previous stories established Conan's enlistment with the forces of Makkalet as a mercenary, defending the city against the invader Turan. Thus Conan becomes a loose parallel to Howard's Germanic hero Von Kalmbach, while Turan stands in for the real-world Ottoman Empire. The ruler of Turan has a slightly different reason for his enmity toward the Cimmerian, but his arc is the same as that of Suleiman I, sending the (fictional) assassin Mikhal Oglu, "The Vulture," to collect Conan's head. Original to the above exchange between Mikhal and his liege is Mikhal's remark that "no night is dark enough to hide [Conan] from me."
Conan is forced to flee the Vulture's forces to beseiged Makkalet, and it's there that the barbarian meets fellow mercenary Red Sonja, who is pretty close visually to Howard's description but lacks any backstory, least of all that of her having become a warrior because her sister became the harem-favorite of an Eastern ruler. The burly Cimmerian doesn't immediately show gratitude for his rescue by Sonja's forces, passing a sexist remark about "a wench who should be tending a hearth somewhere." Sonja doesn't hear the jibe, but he does belatedly attempt to render thanks, only to have the martial maiden reject his overtures. In the short story Howard writes a line meant to establish that his "Sonya" was purely a warrior who had no dalliances with other soldiers. Thomas rewrites this line, making Sonja more ambivalent: "She's all men's delight, and no man's love"-- which fits with some of Red Sonja's greater use of feminine wiles, if not actual selling of her services.
In the short story, Sonya shows some belated appreciation for Von Kalmbach's prowess, and that's the reason she's watching him when the hero's abducted by some of the Vulture's pawns. Thomas doesn't explain exactly how Sonja came to be watching Conan when he gets kidnapped, but her rescue makes it possible, as in the Howard story, to lure the Vulture into a trap where Conan uses his Cimmerian super-sight to gain a fighting-advantage.
The second story, the one literally entitled "The Song of Red Sonja," is entirely original, and puts a new complexion on the heroine's attitude toward the barbarian. But first, Sonja is seen doing something that the all-business Red Sonya would never have done: dancing on a table for the applause of her fellow soldiers, including Conan.
Sonja's dance foments a brawl at the tavern, but she remains in Conan's company as they depart to avoid being arrested by the city's guards. Surprisingly, given what we later learn about Sonja's motives, it's Conan who suggests that they should take a dip in some local pool. Sonja doffs her mail-shirt, and Conan takes that as a go-ahead signal. Then Sonja suddenly remembers that she has a task to perform that very night, and she uses her sexiness to lure the barbarian into helping her.
To his credit, Conan soon figures out that the she-devil wants him for his Cimmerian climbing-skills, so that both of them can rob a local treasure-tower in Makkalet. He goes along with her plan, though, hoping to lure her into a sense of indebtedness, and therefore, into sex. However, Sonja has a secret mission. She hasn't come to Makkalet simply as a random mercenary, but has been charged with recovering a magical item from the treasure-house by another ruler, the humorously named "King Ghannif." (In Yiddish, a "goniff" is a dishonest or disreputable person.")
The magic item, as it happens, conjures a magic serpent, allowing Conan and Sonja something to fight for the next five pages. Thomas throws in a reference to Howard's concept of a race of serpent-men, but the serpent has no independent mythic value, and once the heroes force the creature to retreat back into the bauble, the beast and its talisman are never referenced again in the Marvel CONAN series.
Once Sonja has what she wants, she decides to "burn her bridges," so to speak, with the somewhat gullible barbarian. It's at this point that Thomas has the sword-maiden utter her famous line--
"No man's lips shall ever touch mine, Cimmerian, save those of him who has defeated me on the field of battle!"
Nothing in "Song" sets up this unusual declaration, and the five Sonja stories that followed show no sign of following up on the statement. Not until Sonja got her own origin in the 1975 story in KULL AND THE BARBARIANS #3 did Thomas return to the subject, so it's difficult to say what he, or possibly Barry Smith, might have been thinking of when the line was coined. Thomas had dumped Original Sonya's motive of fighting the Ottomans because of her personal sense of affront (though strangely, not on behalf of her abducted sister). My best guess is that, although Thomas could not have known that comics fans would want to see more of the red-haired vixen, the writer knew that if he brought her back, he would eventually have to come up with a new backstory to explain why Red Sonja had rejected the traditional role of women in a barbaric world. Thomas could easily have borrowed the "no sex without physical conquest" from the Classic Greek tale of Atalanta, who would not marry any man except one who could best her in a foot-race. (The swain who does outrace her, BTW, does so by means of a trick.) The subsequent origin-story, however, would take the concept in an entirely new direction.
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