(I missed posting last week, and it was down to not being able to get online reliably while at the in-laws for Thanksgiving. Apologies for that, and here is one of two posts I’ll put up today and tomorrow)

So next week is the release of NORTHLANDERS #1, the first issue in my new monthly ongoing book for Vertigo. I have a mini-site for it here, with interviews, previews, advance reviews, cover images, some notes on my research, and solicitation information on the first three issues. Based on the preliminary initial order reports I’ve seen, orders for it were very good. When you head to the shop this week, find a copy of CSN with the book on the front page. Or find one of these promo posters that I *think* were sent to retailers this week (maybe next week).

Here is the first seven pages of the book, annotated. I left off the dialogue and captions for this (you can see them here). Following these seven pages are several non-sequential b/w pages from the next three issues. If you want to look at these in another window, go here.

This preview starts off in a location we’ll only see a bit of over the course of this first story - Constantinople. Hence the more aqua color of the water. In my notes to colorist Dave McCaig I suggested something like a postcard from the tropics, a brilliant blue sky, perfect aquamarine water you can through to the ocean floor, etc. I think he took the spirit of that and twisted it a bit, especially in the next pages, adding that slightly sickly green to great effect. This is not such a pleasant scene, here, and a postcard shot wouldn’t work as well in retrospect.
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Ship-to-ship warfare from the Viking Age is something I found little information on, at least not in any great detail. They used these hooks to lash the ships together so no one could escape, and that fourth panel is exactly what I imagine it must have been like. You’ll notice the savvy Varangian Guard, the real-life band of mercenaries working for the Byzantine Emperor, aren’t wearing armor or mail over their red uniforms. Would you want to leap from a swaying boat wearing a hundred pounds of metal you can’t get off in a hurry? If you fall overboard, you’ll instantly sink to the bottom and die.

A few things have been said online about [the main character] Sven’s short hair and little beard. It’s less an attempt to “hipsterize” him as it is to show that he’s rejecting his heritage, trying to be more like what he personally perceives as “civilized”. He lives in Constantinople, the center of the world, and wants to be the progressive, globalized cosmopolitan sort, and less the hairy barbarian.

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[artist] Davide Gianfelice gets the flow perfect, here. And look at the colors, especially the bile-colored backgrounds, and then the final panel, Sven’s blood-stained hands. See the final panel on page 4, where the whole world seems drenched in blood, and then page five… you can almost smell the blood-stink in that middle panel (as can the sharks).

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Davide’s got a great attention to historical detail, and one thing he nailed was the size of these Viking ships. They were not so big.. or not as big as you might think they would be, considering they carried dozens of men each. Some of the cargo ships, built wider but not longer, would carry livestock as well as goods and men. I could write a book just on their shipbuilding alone (I will spare you that), but if there is one thing you can credit the success the Norse peoples had with exploration and expansion, its these ships. Fully loaded, they still only have a foot or two of draft, enabling them to creep up shallow rivers, far inland where no one would expect an attack from ship to occur. Imagine strolling through some sunny pasture… and suddenly, off in the direction of a nearby creek a black dragon’s head appears from the foliage. If that weren’t scary enough, the dragon’s head turns out to be attached to a boat full of screaming killers. Ahhh… that’s the sort of mental image that made me love Vikings when I was a kid.
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Grimness is a real place, in Orkney, Scotland. No more aquamarine seas now. The one time in my life I was ever seasick was on a ferry headed to Orkney.

When you read the book (as of course all of you will, right?) keep your eyes peeled for that raven.

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This is from issue #2. Even though Davide’s art is stylized, it’s got perfect anatomy and proportion and it all feels very realistic… one of the reasons he’s the one I chose to kick off the series. I have complete confidence that whatever I throw at him, whether it be two squads of fighters leaping from one ship to another, fight scenes like you see here and elsewhere, rugged landscapes, or an eight-issue series of mostly 8 to 10 panel pages… he takes it in stride.

These two pages, and the one following it, are from #3 and are points of pride for me… a fishing scene and a deer hunting scene, in the same story! Dad would be so proud. And as cool as I find the ships and the warfare from this time period, I’m equally as fascinated in the more mundane things, like how they ate, what they ate, what the sides of their houses were like, etc. The dark haired girl, known so far as “the hunter’s daughter”, goes fishing in one of my favorite pages to date. And check out Davide’s landscapes… and also how the short sword casts its shadow over Sven’s eyes. Great detail.
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No compound bows and tree chairs for these dudes. Warren Ellis I know will appreciate that. The inspiration for this scene, and that fifth panel in particular is from the Helen Mirren film THE QUEEN, and that part where she spots the deer on the ridge, up in their Scotland estate.

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Trouble! Sven’s fighting lefty here. Some of the samples I saw of Davide’s work, way back when, were from a Western he did for the Italian market, which was good because horses are notoriously hard to draw and he nails it… and he’s gonna have to draw a shitload of horses for this story. Wait ’till the big battle scene at the end of the arc.

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Bails him out… AGAIN.

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Double trouble! This was the most risque page I dared show on Newsarama. You’ll have to buy the book to get the others. Sex and death, the two go hand in hand, and any woman who’s waiting for you in bed while you butcher your deer is a keeper. I think?

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Grimness Settlement from the air. Sorry, Davide.

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This is from #4. Davide’s improving with each page. This REALLY had me stumped… what does the inside of a wooden pallisade wall look like in the year 980? I can sorta guess, but who knows for sure? Davide make it seem like he built the fucking thing himself.

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That’s it ’till tomorrow. Enjoy the pages.

-bri

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