Northlanders #1

Vertigo's 2008 Viking series launches here with a striking cover by Massimo Carnevale — a brooding, weathered warrior dominates the foreground in warm amber tones, ravens wheeling through the sky behind him, while a group of armored fighters rendered in stark silhouette clash below. Writer Brian Wood and artist Davide Gianfelice open the "Sven the Returned" arc with this first issue, and the cover's mood — solitary, hardened, tension coiled just beneath the surface — promises a grounded, serious take on the Norse world.