Brian Wood has carved out a strong niche writing about modern and urban people. From the days of Jennie One and Couscous Express and DMZ, Wood has hung out in the near future, showing us glimpses of what might be while sneakily telling us how things are in the here-and-now. Demo, Local and The New York Four have been teenage tales, warnings and remembrances of a childhood that the author and maybe his audience have left behind. Throughout the majority of his writing, the passage of childhood to adulthood or the rejection of that passage has been the main emphasis as characters are forced to grow up and assume responsibility. Wood’s writing has been modern and urban, so what’s he doing writing a viking tale? While on the surface Northlanders’ taking place almost 1,000 years ago may seem completely different than Megan’s story in Local, maybe Megan and Sven aren’t that different after all.
Northlanders Book One: Sven The Returned is Hamlet for the Viking set, appropriating that classic Shakespearean tale as its basis to create its own story. Like Hamlet, Sven’s father has been killed and his uncle has taken over, usurping Sven’s own birthright. Instead of moping around and navel gazing like Hamlet does, Sven launches into action, claiming that all he wants is the riches that should be his and that his uncle Gorm can keep all of the responsibility and power. But what does Sven really want? Money? Power? Respect? While he claims that all he’s interested in is the riches that should be his by birth and that Gorm can keep all of the power and responsibility, Sven’s actions maybe don’t match his words.
Like Local’s Megan, Sven is running from a past that he may have accept and possibly even embrace. While centuries separate the two characters, Wood approaches both characters as petulant kids who don’t know what they need or want. Both are abandoned and isolated, unable to figure out who or what they want to be when they grow up. Megan’s story is about staying away from home while Sven’s is about returning. It’s fascinating watching Wood exploring the same themes but from two incredibly different points of view. Unlike other writers who can use themes as crutches and cliches, Wood uses them as a starting point for his characters and gives them the room to live and breath. They make their own choices and decisions and they’re usually the wrong ones. The stories we’re seeing are about one running away from the past while the other is forced to face his own past and confront it.
In Northlanders Book One, Wood and artist Davide Gianfelice are working with an ancient yet familiar world. By setting it in the age of vikings, he puts the reader on unfamiliar ground, where men are allowed to be “MEN” and the women are exotic and deadly. It creates a heightened reality for the story where we’re never sure what can happen next. These are a different people than you would find in a modern story like DMZ or Local so you are never sure how they’ll react to a situation. For an old tale, Wood doesn’t approach it with any false sense of reverence or awe, writing it as aggressively and honestly as he approaches all of his artwork. Northlanders neither condemns nor glorifies the past; it presents it as a simple reality. By not trying to show the past as either some glorious ideal or a horribly decadent, Wood makes the story more universal and, surprisingly, more modern and current story than most viking stories could ever be.
All of that doesn’t mean that the story ignores its cultural heritage, capturing it in the artwork. Davide Gianfelice is turning out to be a typical Vertigo find– a solid and stylistic but little-known artist who is a near perfect fit for the book. From the frozen fields of the Orkney Islands to the warm and sensual balconies of Constantinople, the artwork captures the reader by reminding them of the settings and brutality that is downplayed in Wood’s script. Dave McCaig’s unique coloring also helps create the tone and mood of the art. The coloring is more reminiscent of the reds, blues and greens that you would witness in stained glass rather than in another comic book on the racks.
A while ago, I was starting to worry about Brian Wood and his range as a writer. Much of his work, while excellently done, treaded the same ground; kids growing up and being smart alecy and resentful. We saw it in Couriers, Demo, DMZ and Local. In fact, it was Local that made me really worry. At the beginning of that series, it appeared like Wood was just caught in an endless cycle of revisiting youth and their issues. Of course, Local developed into much more than that and we were able to watch Wood grow and develop even as the character of Megan did in that story. With Northlanders, Wood’s first post-Local writing, he may be covering some of the same ideas and themes but there’s a greater confidence and a larger range in his writing. Local was a true break-through novel for him and Northlanders Book One continues to show the growth, maturity and individualistic voice of one of comics strongest writers.
Northlanders Book One: Sven the Returned
Written by: Brian Wood
Drawn by: Davide Gianfelice
Colored by: Dave McCaig
Lettered by: Travis Lanham
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Tags: Brian Wood, Davide Gianfelice, Northerners