Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Vault | Tagged: heathen, Natasha Alterici, Rachel Deering, vault comics

Heathen Volume 1: A Love So Visible, Yet Unseen

Heathen Volume 1 (by Natasha Alterici and Rachel Deering) is one of Vault Comics' breakout successes. The team, now with artist Ashley A. Woods, currently works on volume three, still through Vault. Heathen stars Aydis, an outcast Viking, and her mission to bring down Odin. Or is it?

I read Heathen's first volume immediately after I read Loose Ends, a crime comic written by the now-disgraced Jason Latour. By most measurements, Loose Ends should be the comic that sticks in my memory. Loose Ends' psychedelic art's (via Chris Brunner and Rico Renzi) more polished (sorry Alterici), there are more twists in Loose Ends, and crime is my cup of tea more than a myth.

But it's two days after I read both, and Heathen's the comic I keep turning over in my mind.

Why? What does Alterici do that keeps me thinking about Heathen? Is the draw to Heathen only that it's a modern eye towards myth and scantily clad lesbian valkyries?

It could be execution. Alterici made many comics before, and each successive project aids the author in telling stories. It could be she's using characters already in the public consciousness: Brunhilde (here spelled Brynhild), Sigurd, Odin. We know them, and we know their stories already. Maybe it's the contemporary dialogue. There's no thou and thee to make me roll my eyes.

Or maybe it's something else: Heathen is also about love. It's mostly about forbidden love at the time of hostility or war rising Christianity and the Vikings. Aydis's community sentenced her to death for the crime of loving women, and that sets the not quite familiar story in motion. In her travels, she sees she's not the only one haunted by love.

Maybe that's what keeps me thinking about Heathen: That beneath the anti-authoritarian revenge story is a comic that's about the lengths people will go for love, gods included.

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