A few months back I read a comic which has been rattling around in my brain ever since. It is a one-shot issue of Top Cow‘s horror comic series The Darkness, titled “Lodbrok’s Hand,” written by Phil Hester with art by Michael Avon Oeming. While most of the comics set in The Darkness are contemporary tales featuring the character of Jackie Estacado (current wielder of the power of the Darkness for which the series is names), this comic was set in the Viking Age. And frankly, I really wish more comics did this right.
First things first: for anyone unfamiliar with the Top Cow Universe, it is one of several branches of comics which emerged in the 90s as part of the rise of Image Comics. I’ve written about it before, but the general sense of the stories is that they occur in the present, usually in big cities like New York, and tend to mix elements of a crime drama with gothic horror. There’s no shortage of modern fantasy comics out there, but these comics are really worth checking out, especially the two flagship titles, The Darkness and Witchblade.
But as I said, this particular story was set in the Viking Age. And okay, it can seem like everyone has done a Viking story by now. It is a rich era in history that covered three centuries, just as many continents, and which has inspired people ever since from Richard Wagner to J.R.R. Tolkien to Jack “the King” Kirby. But for me, what stands out to me about “Lodbrok’s Hand” is that it actually feels a lot like one of the Icelandic Sagas.
The story opens with a crew of Norsemen seated in a longship. Several of the crewmen discuss their leader, a grim-faced, one-handed warrior seated at the helm, unsleeping, unyielding, staring into the mists ahead. In the great tradition of oral storytelling that the Viking skalds were famed for, one of the crewmen begins to tell the others of their captain’s past.
We flashback to when Lodbrok was a younger man, traveling with his sister Freydis as they lead the few members of their village to survive a massacre by an enemy king named Grimur. Immediately we get to enjoy Hester’s mastery of the language. He describes Freydis as being a woman who “HAD THE KEN OF THE ANCIENT WITCHES, AND THEIR FORGOTTEN FIRE BURNED BLUE IN HER VEINS.” The group come upon an ancient horn, which Ragnar blows upon to summon a person whose help they seek. After blowing the horn, we get another evocative description from Hester: “A BLACK LONG-SHIP, LIKE NONE SEEN BEFORE OR SINCE, GLIDED SILENTLY INTO THE FJORD LIKE WHALE OIL OVER ICE.”
The captain of this ship is the legendary “Black Captain,” a sea-king who wielded the Darkness during the Viking Age. The story continues as the captain ferries Lodbrok’s crew to where Grimur’s armies are settled. The story builds to a climactic battle between Lodbrok’s forces and Grimur, and I will not ruin the ending, as there are a couple dramatic twists and some breath-taking illustrations of battle by Oeming.
It took me a while to figure out what makes this story work. In many ways, this is a generic medieval fantasy. In Hester’s original script, he even says “Mike – This is set in some kind of kick-ass imaginary Frazetta Era- Bronze into Iron Viking age, so don’t get hung up on historical accuracy.” As I personally tend to abhor the tendency for fantasy to supplant historical accuracy in fiction, this shouldn’t work as well as it does. Yet that’s the thing. This is a story with evocative imagery where Hester’s incredible use of language emulates the original medieval sagas, even as Oeming’s art manages to find a style halfway between the historic past and the dark gothic aesthetic. Sure, Lodbrok’s name is a bit cliché (I mean, it literally means “Hairy-Pants!” so without the context of the original Ragnar Lodbrok’s story, it doesn’t entirely make sense). And yes, many characters have horns on their helmets (something no viking ever had). But the blend of history and fantasy come together like the best of the classic adventure stories.
The story is collected in The Darkness: Accursed Volume 3 and can be ordered from any good comic book retailer, while the issue can be bought on its own at ComiXology. It has been out a while so most comic retailers probably don’t have it stocked, but trust me, it’s worth checking out.
The Modern Skald 