Brian Wood – Comics + Graphic Novels

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Titles of Things To Get To in Five Years
Dubious Films You Love Anyway?
The Cross + The Hammer collection and other news
DMZ CASTING

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Ryan Kelly’s arc ends with issue #16, and you have some great artists coming in on issues #17 and 18. What can you tell CBR readers about those two issues?

These are two single-issue stories, two one-shots. The first is an ambitiously titled story called “The Viking Art of Single Combat,” and it’s just as ambitious in deed as in word. Using a 22-page swordfight as context, I run down the theories and tactics used during that time in history. I imagine a cross between the visuals of Vagabond and the language of something like Warren Ellis’s “Crecy,” but probably more detailed than that. Certainly wider in scope. Something for the History Channel set. Vasilis Lolos is drawing that one. He’s drawn “Pirates Of Coney Island,” “The Last Call,” “Pixu,” and “5,” for which he won an Eisner.

The next is “The Shield Maidens,” which takes the folktale of the Valkyries, the women warriors, and grounds it firmly into reality — takes the mythology right out of it. As you can imagine, it deals with the women of a village and what they do when all the men have been killed in a siege. We’ll have Danijel Zezelj drawing this.

Any chance of characters from earlier arcs making a return appearance? Sven, perhaps?

Sven will return, under the title “Sven The Immortal,” and of course Davide Gianfelice will draw it. I hope it’ll be soon, within the next six months, but it all depends on the schedules. Right now I have issues #19 and #20 of the series planned for Sven.

What do you have planned for “Northlanders” later this year?

After these short stories, I am working on an outline for the next longer arc, which will be at least six issues and possibly eight. I had started gathering information and writing notes for what I thought could be a prose novel about the Black Death, but for a variety of reasons I am starting to think this idea would be better served as an arc in “Northlanders.” It couldn’t be about the Black Death, since that happened way later, but I found some records of minor outbreaks and sicknesses I could use as a starting point. Like I said already, this would be set in what is Russia today. I believe Leandro Fernandez is going to draw it.

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This is the Vertigo “On The Ledge” column I wrote to announce the book to the world, and I realized that a link no longer exists on their website, so I’m reposting it here to give it a permanent home.

Vertigo On the Ledge: with Brian Wood

Pitch me a monthly series, my editor Will Dennis told me. But something different, break out of your box. And so I did. The first line of the NORTHLANDERS proposal was: “A nihilistic crime saga set in A.D. 870, when much of England was under Viking rule.”

I’ve always loved Vikings. As a kid, I thought they were these badasses in fur and horns, watched over by scary gods of thunder and death, lissome shieldmaidens at their sides, all stalking the frozen northlands. All pretty great stuff to a 12-year-old, but I knew I needed to do something more, that it needed the maturity and sophistication Vertigo is known for.

I began to read, dozens of books. I went to Iceland. I went back and looked at photo albums from my many trips to Scotland – Orkney especially, the setting for the first NORTHLANDERS story arc. I set aside the mythology and the fairy tales, focusing mostly on history and day-to-day life. What I found most interesting was how the world was at the start of the Viking Age, coming up on the first thousand years of European history. Why the Vikings had to do what they did, and how, in a relatively short (and incredibly violent) time, they pulled Europe out of its dark ages and changed the world, albeit by swordpoint.

We went through many drafts of that pitch. It’s more than just a gritty crime story now, and I changed the date to 980. It’s become a series about millennial fears, clash of cultures and the death of the pagan way of life and the relentless march of progress. About one man, a stubborn Norse warrior in massive denial about who he is, reconnecting with the remote lands he grew up in.

And, since this is a book about Vikings, there’s a lot of sex and a lot of death – desperate men locked in shield walls fighting for their land and their lives yard by blood-soaked yard.

I broke out of my box, sure enough. But I’m still writing about the ideas I always do: identity, location, politics, war, people in love and lives in flux. It’s just set a thousand years in the past and with a lot more swords. I think the 12-year-old me would approve.

—Brian Wood

Me in Iceland at Godafoss, where the Vikings chucked, literally, their pagan gods over in favor of Lord Baby Jesus.

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Click here for the full article, with answers from Jason Aaron, Brian Azzarello, G. Willow Wilson, Jock, Cliff Chiang, David Lapham, and Will Dennis.

WHAT WORK FROM 2008 ARE YOU THE MOST PROUD OF?

Brian Wood: LOCAL. The best thing I’ve done, and hopefully the first of many Ryan Kelly collabs. And the first NORTHLANDERS book, which not only got me out of my comfort zone but did the same for a lot of people who thought they knew what a comic book about Vikings was.

WHAT WORK ARE YOU THE MOST EXCITED ABOUT FOR 2009?

Brian Wood: A few upcoming NORTHLANDERS one-shots should be excellent, if only for the artists we have lined up coughRissocough. Seeing how the new DEMO books come out, and writing issue #50 of DMZ. 50! Reaching fifty issues of a series is sort of like when I hit 30 years of age. I never thought I’d make it that long.

WHAT’S YOUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION?

Brian Wood: I don’t make them. Each year, each week, each day I just try to make forward momentum, and improve in everything if only a little bit.

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Link to Blair Butler running down her Best Of 2008, giving both Local and Northlanders second-place spots in their respective categories.

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Back when years only had three numbers in them, men lived or died by sword and superstition. After years of blade brawls, Sven—the lead of Brian Wood’s Viking drama Northlanders (DC Comics/Vertigo, $9.99)—decides to change his warrish ways and return to his family’s estate in Orkney. But in the first collected volume of this ongoing series, Sven finds that returning home can be the most displacing (and violent) journey of all. Amid all the enjoyably bloody battles and desperate sex (gorgeously rendered by Davide Gianfelice), Wood cleverly plays with the philosophical and religious shifts overcoming not only Sven, but the cultures clashing all over the world during the Dark Ages. (link)

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DMZ, another year of stories: 264 pages.

Northlanders, another year: 264 pages.

Demo, six issue miniseries: 132 pages.

The New York Four, the sequel book we signed contracts for, will happen this year.  I’m chatting with DC about format still, but assuming right now it’s not any shorter or longer than the first book: 144 pages.

Something Unannounced: 176 pages (might possibly bleed into 2010, but hopefully not)

I have some ideas I’d love to see done, DMZ specials, a short graphic novel, etc.  But that’s all in the theoretical category right now.  I can guesstimate 100 pages, since I fully intend to at least start on something shortly.

2009: give or take 1,080 pages of comics written.

Unless I die.

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“I’d like to thank those who’ve listened and enjoyed the story, and since those who don’t like it won’t ever be satisfied, let them enjoy their own misery – Amen.”

- The Saga of Gongu-Hrolf

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cover+northlanders_16, originally uploaded by brianwood.

(© Massimo Carnevale)

This is for the final installment of “The Cross + The Hammer”.

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DMZ #39
Written by Brian Wood
Art by Riccardo Burchielli
Cover by John Paul Leon
“War Powers” part 3 of 4. Deep in Chinatown, Matty strikes it rich – at least for his bosses. Now he has a long fight back through the war-torn streets of New York. What’s the money for, anyway? And what “game changer” does Parco have planned?
On sale February 11

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NORTHLANDERS #15
Written by Brian Wood
Art by Ryan Kelly
Cover by Massimo Carnevale
“The Cross + The Hammer” part 5 of 6. Magnus’ past is revealed, and if you thought it was impossible for him to get more dangerous, he just did. But Ragnar’s tightening the noose, and Magnus is running out of room to maneuver. Thousands of men fight on a battlefield in Clontarf while these two men wage their own game of death.
On sale February 25

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Northlanders #11 Review
The Vikings struggle to contain the citizens of Ireland.
by Daniel Crown

Brian Wood’s approach to is an incredibly risky one. By constantly jumping perspectives and eras, the author runs the risk of losing some of his base readership at the first sign of trouble, as there are no residual endearments to carry his audience through any potential rough patches. Luckily enough, he’s yet to take any serious missteps, and “The Cross + The Hammer” seems geared to become his most entertaining arc to date.

Switching gears to the end of a Viking dominated Ireland, Woods latest introductory installment, ostensibly, serves as a long chase scene. Yet somehow, the author manages to instill a fascinating existential dilemma in between all the hectic violence. The relationship between Magnus and his daughter holds an immense amount of potential as Wood sets up a dynamic straight out of “Lone Wolf and Cub.”

Despite its heavy tilt towards action, “The Cross + The Hammer” feels much smaller in scale than “Sven the Returned”, in that it drops Shakespearean dramatics in favor of an analytical look at ancestry and family obligation. Brigid’s reluctant involvement in her father’s campaign is at the same time inspiring and disturbing. In the span of a few pages, Wood sets the stage for an investigation into the extent of loyalty, as well as the moving contradictions that family allegiances can pit against one’s personal view of morality.

Speaking of diversity, I’m mildly surprised by how well Ryan Kelly drew this story. Not that I doubted his talent in anyway, it’s just that the only exposure I’d had to the artist was his work on Local, which is comparatively grounded in nature. This is a far cry from introspective Indie comics, and Kelly makes the transition seamlessly.

Though in retrospect, his adeptness for this sort of story should have been obvious. Considering the inner-debates swelling within the character of Brigid, Kelly may have been the perfect choice for this arc, in that his experience with more understated stories has given him the tools to convey emotions without descriptive dialogue. Brigid’s reluctance is painted all over her face, becoming apparent long before Wood expounds on the subject.

For those of you who haven’t picked up Northlanders to this point, now would be a perfect time to start. This arc is already showing signs of the sort of sensibilities that make Wood’s stories so relatable, even when epic in nature, providing even more proof that the author is one of the best character writers in the industry.

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“The Cross + The Hammer” part 1 of 6, art by Ryan Kelly, Massimo Carnevale, and Dave McCaig.

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So, did you know I still get complaints from readers who tell me that the modern dialogue and cuss words in Northlanders is “wrong” somehow? I do, at least one email or blog entry each time an issue ships. But, I have a solution! An old acquaintance Arni Beck, Icelander and product of a thousand years of Viking DNA, wanted me to pass this along:

“when you get those emails, just tell them to go to a viking country. the vikings will then tell them to shut the fuck up.”

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