By: Brian Wood (writer), Danijel Zezelj (art), Dave McCaig (colors), Travis Lanham (letters), Massimo Carnevale (cover) & Mark Doyle (editor)
The Story: The end of the series and the Icelandic Trilogy.
Review: [SPOILER WARNING] Endings are hard. Even with properties we love, the endings often aren’t what we wanted: The Sopranos, Lost or Wood’s own DMZ series. It isn’t so much that the ending is poor; it’s that we loved the series for years and want the ending to be great (The Wire, Y the Last Man, etc.). We so badly want it to be a cherry on top that takes the property to a higher level. Some of it is selfishness; we want to say that a property that we followed over the years – where we invested the time and the love – has transcended to “GREAT” and we can strut around and act like we knew all along that it would be that kind of series.
It’s sad to report that this ending is quite good, but not “great”. It provides a very suitable ending to the Icelandic Trilogy, but it isn’t really the capstone to the series that it could have been. Perhaps that makes sense? Northlanders has never been about an over-arching “story” like 100 Bullets or Planetary, but has instead been a collection of unconnected story arcs. Maybe hoping for a final issue that laced everything together with a bow was too much?
Enough with the wishing for what might-have-been… This issue does have some very strong moments. What it really sells, as circumstances become dire for the Haukssons, is that they’re still out there. Even though this issue doesn’t have a very happy ending for our main characters, given the importance of family and ancestors in this story arc, it’s hard to dismiss the importance of a pregnant, yet still fierce Freya escaping into the wilderness or old-man Hauksson similarly making a break for it. You get the sense that if we could convince Wood to let us watch the denizens of Iceland for just a few more issues, you’d see Freya’s grandson plotting revenge and a way to reestablish the Hauksson name.
Freya Hauksson is such a wonderful character. As with many Northlanders arcs, the women are the best and strongest characters. But, of all these strong Viking women, Freya is the strongest and the best. She really hasn’t had a weak moment. She’s smart, brave, resourceful, tough, vicious and to her credit, knows when to cut her loses. It’s disappointing that we’ll not get to see her grace a comic book again.
Now, if you’re looking for the chink in the armor of this issue, it’s how Freya’s husband, Oskar is handled. True, he kinda makes good in the end, but what happened to him? Did he go off to meet the advancing army alone and die (off-panel)? Or did he just wander off into the snow once he realized that he was a failure? He didn’t take his sword with him. A little more clarity about his motives would have been nice. Even though we see Freya and the old-man making similar disappearances, we know that those two are just living to fight another day. Oskar is not so transparent…
The art is again deftly handled by the combo of Danijel Zezelj and Dave McCaig. Haunting is probably the best way to describe Zezelj’s characters, and that’s fitting for the story because this isn’t a happy tale. It should be haunting to see this strong woman recognize that her world is coming to an end. There are probably other artists who could have given this arc a go and done effective work, but Zezelj gave it such a unique twist. He makes better use of straight-on views of faces than any other artist that comes to mind. Usually straight-on faces look weird and they are highly unforgiving if the artist is lacking technically. But, Zezelj gives you a view into the character’s soul this way. There’s Freya: noble, haughty and annoyed as hell at her husband who isn’t half the person she is. Bravo folks!
Conclusion: It may be disappointing that we didn’t get a more powerful send off for the series as a whole, but this was still an outstanding ending to this story arc. I’ll miss Northlanders a lot.
Grade: A-
-Dean Stell
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