Valhalla #1

History

The project grew out of planning sessions in 1976–1977 between editor Henning Kure and Interpresse colleague Arne Stenby, who wanted a homegrown Danish comic built around Viking and Norse mythology. They recruited the young artist Peter Madsen, who in turn brought in writer Hans Rancke-Madsen — chosen specifically for his facility with dialogue and characterization. The material first reached readers as a serialized newspaper strip in the Danish daily Politiken beginning in 1978, and the collected album edition was published by Interpresse in 1979; each album in the series would go on to require a year or more of production time. Colorist Søren Håkonsson joined the team for all eight of the earliest albums, and his contributions were considered so integral that coloring was treated as a distinct creative discipline on the series from the very start.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Title: 'Ulven er Løs' ('Cry Wolf' in English), published by Interpresse (Copenhagen, Denmark) in 1979 — not Semic, which was a separate Swedish publisher that later absorbed Interpresse in 1986.
• Written by Hans Rancke-Madsen, drawn by Peter Madsen, colored by Søren Håkonsson, and produced/edited by Henning Kure.
• First appearance of Tjalfi and Röskva as recurring human protagonist-companions to Thor — mortal siblings who become Thor's servants and serve as the readers' eyes into Asgard across the full series.
• Story adapts the Prose (Snorri's) Edda myth of the Fenrir Wolf's escape from its bonds, intercut with a flashback on how Loki and Tyr originally brought the wolf to Valhalla.
• The album debuted as a newspaper serial strip in the Danish daily Politiken in 1978, with the collected album edition following in 1979 — making the 1979 issue technically the first collected/album printing of that material.
• An educational edition of Cry Wolf received the Danish School Librarians' Association's Children's Book Prize in 1982.
• The series grew to 15 albums (1979–2009); Carlsen Comics took over publishing from Interpresse beginning with album #7, and subsequently re-published the first six albums under its own imprint.
• The Cry Wolf storyline — specifically its introduction of Tjalfi, Röskva, Thor, and Loki — formed the basis of the first act of the 1986 Danish animated feature film co-directed by Peter Madsen and Jeffrey J. Varab, and the story was also loosely adapted in the 2019 live-action film directed by Fenar Ahmad.

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