If your understanding of Vikings, like ours, is limited to the fact that they really love Spam, it's time to check out Brian Wood and Davide Gianfelice's epic Northlanders, a sword-and-snow comic full of blood, bone-crunching, and hot Nordic sex. As addictive as HBO's Rome — if a good bit more chilly — Northlanders tells the story of Sven, the long-disappeared son of a local king who returns to the Orkney Islands in A.D. 980, set on reclaiming his inheritance. Soon, though, he's drawn into a war — and becomes an uneasy ally to a mysterious warrior woman hidden in the mountains.

Thoroughly researched by Wood (DMZ) and totally entertaining, Northlanders: Sven the Returned is out this month from Vertigo.