Comic Review: Heathen #9

Heathen #9

Vault Comics

Writers: Natasha Alterici

Artist: Ashley A. Woods

I love Heathen. I love the Norse Mythology of it. I love the subversion of said mythology. Heathen is a comic that takes legends and old, beautiful religion, and reimagines it for the modern age. It’s pleasing on so many levels, and that’s not to mention the art. . .

You really don’t need to read prior issues to take something away from this issue. However, allusions to prior events and character motivations will certainly have more weight if you do. That being said, the plot in this issue is simple and linear, it doesn’t jump around in time and space. It starts at A and ends at B, and while that may seem basic in structure compared to some comics, sometimes capture and confrontation is all one needs for a quality issue. Furthermore, there are trolls–and trolls get little love in fantastical stories these days. So, props!

There aren’t many characters in this issue, but the comic doesn’t suffer from that. In fact, benefits. The main interactions are between the protagonist, Aydis and a father, son duo of trolls. It spends a lot of time developing these trolls, so it makes sense that I hope to see them in later issues. Like any good book, the trolls are more layered as characters than is immediately apparent. Aydis also gets quite a lot of page space, but her development isn’t as profound–after all, readers of prior issues already know her. And then there’s Odin. That guy is a &!#$. But he does make some interesting points. Would humans have found morality without a god to guide them? I guess it depends on whether you believe humans created God/gods or if God/gods created humans.

Love the art. Everything about it screams Scandanavian design/aesthetics. Last summer I spent two months in Denmark. While there I visited the Design Museum Denmark and while comics are not traditionally Danish, the art of Heathen is very much pulled from the same cloth, so to speak. Simple, yet unique character design, muted colors of grays and browns, with a touch of blue and sometimes yellow. Inverted speech balloon presentation (black background, white letters), also add to a simple aesthetic that nevertheless, pops off the page. There’s even a series of images within this rather dark piece that brightens the whole issue up. It’s similar to dark-colored houses in Scandanavia. Black houses are popular as they make everything around them look more vibrant.