Northlanders #24

The fourth chapter of "The Plague Widow" arc finds Brian Wood and Leandro Fernández's Viking saga at its most atmospheric — cover artist Massimo Carnevale renders a braided, armored woman clutching a weapon beside a roaring fire, her expression caught somewhere between resolve and dread as snow-shrouded trees loom around her and shadowy figures gather in the wintry background. Dark shapes of wolves or ravens stalk the tree line above, reinforcing the sense that survival in this frozen, plague-haunted world is never more than a fragile flame. This 2010 Vertigo series consistently delivered gritty, human-scale Norse storytelling, and this midpoint issue looks to push its protagonist into some of her most desperate terrain yet.