It's been more than five months since Vertigo canceled Northlanders after 50 issues, but writer Brian Wood signaled over the weekend that he hasn't told his last Viking tale.

"The final volume of the collected Northlanders will be published in December," he wrote on his blog. "The last monthly comic came out earlier this year. I meant to write some sort of wrap up essay, but it felt like a requiem and honestly I’m not really ready to say goodbye like that. I’ve been missing the book more than I thought."

He continued, "So I’ve always said that, sure, eventually I’ll write more viking comics.  I have plenty of material, and after I let some time pass I’ll get to it. I think once Conan is over -- I have about 15 scripts left to write -- I’ll start writing this new venture.  It may follow the same format as Northlanders or it may not.  [...] I know what the story is. I wrote it already as a tv pilot treatment and for awhile I thought it might be a novel and there’s a couple chapters written. I think it probably needs to be a comic. With all these projects I’m taking on, there’s still something missing. This isn’t a eulogy. More like a promise."

Debuting in December 2007, Northlanders utilized self-contained arcs to tell tales set at different times and locations, and with different characters, during the same historical era — the late 8th century to the 11th century. Wood worked with a range of artists on the book, including Becky Cloonan, Leandro Fernandez, Davide Gianfelice, Ryan Kelly, Vasilis Lolos, Dean Ormston, Fiona Staples and Danijel Zezelj. Massimo Carnevale illustrated all of the covers.