Brian Wood writes good comics. His book DMZ is one of my favourites. I knew he wrote a Viking book too but I don’t really have a huge hankering in my heart for Vikings. On the cover of Sven the Returned there’s a quote saying “Finally, Vikings done right!” I have never really felt the lack, nor have I seen Vikings done poorly, so yeah. But I like Wood’s characters and reading it from the library required little from me. If I was going to read Viking comics Northlanders would be the ones I’d read.
This book is about a guy Sven from the Orkney islands returning home to claim his inheritance from his scheming uncle who stole it. There’s a lot of killing people with swords and arrows and shit. It covers a lot more time than I would have expected, and I gather that the later story arcs aren’t Sven’s further adventures.
Reading it though, I couldn’t put the roots of comics in pulp fiction out of my head. I suppose it’s the Watchmen effect, like how in that world they had Pirate comics instead of superheroes. And I read Old West comics. I don’t know. I just felt like I was in some other world where Viking comics were the norm for tales of people being badass.
Man, I haven’t been able to write a coherent review or anything else in months. I’m sorry.
