The Viking Queen

Paul Storrie has written such comics as Sheena: Queen of the Jungle, Robyn of Sherwood, Justice League Unlimited, and more. Now, he brings you the rip-roaring adventure of Elgven, The Viking Queen from Source Point Press. Westfield’s Roger Ash recently asked Storrie to tell us more about this exciting one-shot.

Westfield: The Viking Queen is dedicated to Lela Gwenn. What can you tell us about her?

Paul Storrie: Lela is friend of mine, a talented writer whom I met on Twitter and then got to know in person from conventions. She’s written Clive Barker’s Bestiary #4, Kickstarted a comic with artist Richard White called Born Dark, does a webcomic called Raconteuse with artist Valentine Barker, and has a new 4-issue series from Dark Horse in this month’s Previews called Bad Luck Chuck, with artist Matthew Dow Smith A few years back, she was having some serious health issues that resulted in a back and forth between us on Twitter, where we envisioned her as a Viking Queen battling (her name for it) Ovaria, Bringer of Chaos. I said I really wanted to see that as a comic. She said go for it. More than a few twists and turns later – here we are!

Westfield: What can readers look forward to in the book?

Storrie: The Viking Queen is an old school sword & sorcery tale with magic, monsters, and mayhem, with some eldritch horror thrown in. Because it really isn’t sword & sorcery without some eldritch horror. The Viking Queen Elgven and her warriors have to overcome the dark sorceress Ovaria and her berserkers to save Elgven’s kingdom and the whole land of Norveg.

Westfield: The artist on The Viking Queen is Kevin Caron. What can you say about your collaboration?

Storrie: Kevin and I have known each other for years. We’ve talked about collaborating before (beyond the inking he did on the Sheena: Queen of the Jungle series I worked on at Moonstone). The timing just worked out right for The Viking Queen to make that happen. His previous projects include a graphic novel called Casting Bones from Tilding Press, inks on several Moonstone projects, and drawing the series Badger Saves the World from IDW.

Westfield: The Viking Queen was originally a Kickstarter project. How was that process?

Storrie: For me, the Kickstarter was a breeze. I did a video, lined up some stretch goal collaborators, and then handed everything off to the talented team at Source Point Press. They ran the show from there. (Shout out to Travis McIntire and Bob Salley in particular.) It was terrific to see the support from the readers. The campaign raised almost 10 times our initial goal. Very gratifying!

Westfield: Do you have more stories of the Viking Queen you’d like to tell?

Storrie: Absolutely! One of the Kickstarter stretch goals was a digital copy of a second Viking Queen story. Artist Kristen Cella (who worked on the My Boyfriend is a Monster series from Graphic Universe, as did I) has already finished it. The letterer and colorist are lined up. Hope it’ll be going out to backers before long.

After that, we want to do at least 2 more stand alone stories so we can put them all together in a nice collection. I’d like to do one set in Elgven’s youth and then maybe take her and her crew into the Mediterranean, since history tells us the Norse visited that region (as demonstrated by the Byzantine Varangian Guard). I’ve got other ideas too, so I’m hoping for a second volume at some point.

Westfield: Any closing comments?

Storrie: Just to say that fans of Conan, Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser, Jirel of Joiry, and Elric should really enjoy this story. The whole team (myself, Kevin, colorist Sean Seal, letterer Justin Birch, and all the fine folks at Source Point) put a lot of effort into making it an exciting tale of heroics and horror, with a star as tough, brave, and smart as the real-life Viking Queen, Lela.