“Northlanders:” Have Sword, Will Travel
Some time ago I confessed to having read Ed Brubaker’s work on “Iron Fist” with no particular enjoyment. In reply, a wise and learned friend said, “What’s not to like?” (Actually, he also threatened to give me an “iron fisting,” but that’s not relevant here.) And now that I’ve finished reading “Northlanders” just a few days after he told me how little he liked it, I find myself coming back with a similarly flip and unfalsifiable reply.
“Northlanders” is nothing more and nothing less than a spaghetti Western masquerading as a Viking period piece. Here, the violence is served up on the point of a blade, rather than the barrel of a gun, but the other familiar elements are the same. Your hero: a grizzled loner with uncommon death-dealing skill. Your villain: a rich baron who “owns this town.” Draw seemingly clear moral choices and make a few vague gestures at complexity. Don’t stint on the busty frontier babes – er, naked women reclining on bearskin rugs. And use broad, slow takes (panels) to highlight the waning sun on the rough, lonely landscape.
In “Northlanders,” writer Brian Wood seems to begin his work without a clear idea of where he might go. He introduces two marginally sympathetic female characters and all but tosses a coin to choose between them. He creates a villain, then winds up finding one of his henchmen more interesting. Similarly, Wood’s hero Sven is meant to be a vengeful pariah, but his character gets rather lost amid the gunplay (I mean, swordplay) until he 
makes a moral compromise that serves as this arc’s dramatic resolution. (Let’s try to ignore the profanity-laced dialogue, which might as well be cut from “Deadwood.”) Apart from the sense of narrative spontaneity, achieved as the story searches for an ending, Wood’s mild achievement in “Northlanders” relies heavily on his artist, Davide Gianfelice. His effortless landscapes and fierce, slashing action scenes carry the read, supporting its redundant action bits.
So then, in case it seems that I’ve said too much… how about “What’s not to like?”
