BRIAN WOOD’S BEEN on a tear lately.
Well, longer than “lately.” For the past decade, Wood’s been
cranking out some of the most noteworthy and varied comics out there,
like the indie hits Demo and Local (illustrated by Becky
Cloonan and Ryan Kelly, respectively); the sci-fi adventure
Supermarket (illustrated by Kristian Donaldson); and the
Manhattan-is-a-warzone thriller DMZ (which is illustrated by
Riccardo Burchielli), which just saw its seventh trade paperback
collection hit bookstores a few weeks ago.
No, by “Brian Wood’s been on a tear lately,” I mean he’s been
kicking ass in the past few months—with Northlanders, his
brutal, gorgeous, gripping comic about vikings. Taking place in
Northern Europe between the eighth and 12th centuries,
Northlanders just saw its 20th issue hit comic stores, where it
joins issues 17-19 and the two trades that collect the series’ first 16
issues. Kinda like 100 Bullets with swords or 300 with
brains, Northlanders is one of the best books currently on store
shelves, period.
“I don’t mean to insult anybody, but what I liked in vikings wasn’t
represented,” Wood says from his home in New York when I ask where the
book came from. “My editor and I have the little jokey inside phrase,
‘This isn’t your daddy’s viking comic,'” he laughs. “No one’s ever
gonna talk to a god in my book, the way they do in Thor or
whatever.” Attributing Northlanders‘ hard-edged realism to “OCD”
levels of research (including reading every nonfiction book on vikings
he could find, and spending chunks of his honeymoon in Iceland in
museums), Wood notes that the book’s influences range from samurai
sagas to black metal to crime fiction.
“I’ve always called it a crime book, and I know I define that word
differently than other people might, or I’m a lot looser with it,” Wood
says. “But I always felt [the book] had that underlying vibe, to one
degree or another…. I read a lot of crime fiction, and try to figure
out how I can bend it to my will in this book.”
“I remember at the beginning, Northlanders was a really tough
sell until everybody kind of figured out what I was doing,” Wood
continues. “Right off the bat, my main character doesn’t look like a
viking. He doesn’t even want to be a viking, and that’s how I
started off the book. I don’t think I would have done it that way if
the book wasn’t structured [in a way] where I can start brand-new
stories all the time.”
Indeed, Northlanders‘ unique format—in which story arcs
span a few issues and then end, allowing Wood to switch up the book’s
setting and characters whenever he feels like it—grants the
writer what he calls a “real creative bonus,” not to mention a killer
reason to have some of comics’ best artists, like Davide Gianfelice and
Vasilis Lolos, try their hands at different arcs, with the book’s rich
palette remaining constant thanks to colorist Dave McCaig.
“The strongest thing Northlanders has to offer is such a
large concept—vikings, and a huge part of the world, hundreds of
years, all different kinds of characters,” Wood says. “I can change
genres, which I do a bit, and location, and [still] kind of be all
things viking. When all is said and done, I’m basically gonna have a
fictional, second set of sagas. It’s gonna be something that does span
hundreds of years, and touches on every major point in time.”
