Northlanders #32

Written by Brian Wood
Art by Riccardo Burchielli

Metal, the latest arc in Northlanders, starts to really get moving with this issue.  Erik, our dumb brute of a hero, continues his vendetta against the Christians that have invaded his world, in the most brutal ways possible.  The Christians have brought in a man to hunt him down.  This character is basically the same person that we saw in the Ryan Kelly-drawn The Cross + The Hammer arc a while ago, which I continue to see as a companion piece to this story, albeit from an opposite perspective.

The two men have a confrontation, but before that we learn a lot more about Ingrid/Agnes, the girl who caused Erik's rampage to begin in the first place.  It turns out that she really is an albino, which was somewhat unclear before, and may be as tapped into the spiritual nature of the old ways as Erik seems to be.  We also get a lengthy treatise on the proper way to make charcoal, which is the type of thing I love this comic for.

Burchielli is doing some cool work in this comic.  He has a couple pages to show Erik at his Christian-slaughtering work, and the style he uses is visceral and unsettling.  There is an undercurrent of hallucination throughout this arc, and it's been very cool to see.