red sonja debuted in the 1973 comic, "conan the barbarian" #23. roy thomas created a new origin story and transposed the timeline from the 16th century of howard's original red sonya, to the hyborian age, another howard creation, in order to have the comic-book red sonja interact with conan the barbarian. in 1975 marvel comics published the first issue of "red sonja" after the character headlined "marvel feature" for seven issues that same year.