Northlanders for February 2010

The Vertigo Comics: Graphic Content blog has a post up now about something they are calling “Brian Wood Month”, where I’ll have four books released in February 2010.  Up there is the cover to Northlanders #25, but click through to see the art for NORTHLANDERS BOOK THREE, which will be called “Blood In The Snow”, collection all the short stories to date:

“Lindisfarne”, art by Dean Ormston (#9, #10)

“The Viking Art Of Single Combat”, art by Vasilis Lolos (#17)

“The Shield Maidens”, art by Danijel Zezelj (#18, #19)

“Sven The Immortal”, art by Davide Gianfelice (#20)

It’s a wonderfully understated cover, but, to me, is a perfect representation of the series.  I’ll post the final cover once its designed.  It is, as always, painted by Massimo Carnevale.

“The Shield Maidens” part 1 preview

(otherwise known as Northlanders #18) This is out this week, part 1 of 2, illustrated beautifully by Danijel Zezelj and Dave McCaig. This is what I said on Newsarama:

….the Valkyries are pure fantasy, and the Norns, the Fates, are a way to humanize the cold, hard facts of how life unfolds… I mirrored a lot of these ideas into my three characters, three wives of dead men who allow fate to guide their actions in escaping from a hundred Saxons trying to kill them. The research involved in this was incredibly difficult. Meaning, I couldn’t find out what a Danish wife at the time would be thinking. The Sagas hold some information but those are just stories and lyrics and often written decades or even centuries after the events being told happened. I found a few slim volumes on every day life in England at the time, and using that and contrasting with what I knew about the Danes, I was able to make a decent approximation. I utterly refused, refused, to follow stereotypes or refer to other fictional depictions for reference. Even if I ended up failing, I wanted to be as true to facts as I could. I’ve written a lot of comics with female characters, and based on feedback and reviews I seem to do a good job of it, of not writing women “like a typical man would” as it is said, especially with Local. I felt like one misstep here would unravel it all, so I tread very carefully. But society back there was horrendously sexist, and that needed to be addressed. The women couldn’t simply be empowered by picking up a sword… too often in pop culture women are shown as “strong” simply by kicking someone’s ass or talking with a foul mouth. I wanted to go deeper than that. Certainly my three characters pick up swords but they don’t view it as a feminist act. If anything its a process they put into the hands of fate, and the choices they eventually take reflect an inner strength irrelevant to how much blood they shed. I’m proud of this.