This actually gets fairly interesting. I didn’t expect for it to navigate to where it’s not just the same old battles and its seeming inability to confront meaningfully the graphic depictions of peoples being subjugated. But it seems to be going toward doing exactly that, less the violence.

It does make more a somewhat slow storyline and the annoying tonal shifts sometimes still happen. But it’s much more interesting and the art is still fantastic. A warrior who becomes a slave, attempting to find a reason to go on without revenge driving him, still has to reckon with his past. It’s not exactly new ground but I appreciate it going in this direction. Especially because the only inkling of it was with his father, but that was basically a blip, compared to the massive amounts of Vikings killing and raping and pillaging and relying on the revenge angle to keep things interesting.