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DC Comics has quietly relinquished the rights to its 50-issue Viking crime series Northlanders back to its creator/writer Brian Wood. DC and Wood stopped doing new work together over a decade ago following the first of several sexual misconduct allegations, however DC continued to reprint Wood's creator-owned work such as Northlanders, as well as DMZ - which it later developed into a short-lived HBO Max series.

"DC Comics/Vertigo published it until recently, when I was able to reclaim the publishing rights and the copyright, which is why I’m experimenting with some new Northlanders stories, seeing how the 2026 version of me does compared to the 2007 version," Wood wrote on his Substack.

Since regaining full rights to Northlanders, Wood has been writing serialized prose Northlanders stories on his Substack and has been working on reprints with international publishers.

DC's decision to relinquish Northlanders comes five years after it renewed its rights deal for the comics with Wood. The renewal, which occurred during development of the DMZ TV series, didn't result in any new Northlanders comics or collections (in North America, at least). 

Since 2013, several individuals have come forward with sexual misconduct allegations against Wood. Among those is a former DC Comics staffer named Anne Scherbina who said that in the early '00s Wood fed a rumor to Rich Johnston, who was writing for CBR at the time, that the women in her department were promiscuous. Johnston published the rumor, and years later repeated her version of the events. Anne Scherbina said printouts of Johnston's report were posted in DC's offices, and she believes it affected her prospects at the company. She ended up leaving DC shortly thereafter, but didn't speak out publicly until 2013.

Wood has not done any new published work for DC since 2012, ending a multi-year relationship that included an exclusive contract. In 2011, DC removed Wood as writer of the 'New 52' Supergirl reboot, and in 2012 the publisher canceled both Northlanders and DMZ as ongoing Vertigo series.

Following the end of his relationship with DC for new comics work, Wood did significant work for Dark Horse Comics, Image Comics, Marvel Comics, BOOM! Studios, and Titan Comics up until 2019. In 2019, after new sexual misconduct allegations by former comics journalist Laura Hudson were made public, Dark Horse publicly broke ties with Wood, saying it "will not pursue any new projects with Wood" and canceled a planned Alien series he had written, in which the first issue was printed but never released.

Since then, Wood has written for Cold Iron Studios' Aliens: Fireteam Elite game, Scopely's Kingdom Maker game, and has self-published various prose fiction.

Interested? Here's where to find your closest local comic store, courtesy of Sweet, and here's a guide to how (and where) to read comics online. If you're looking for the best comics in recent memory, check out the Eisner Awards winners and the Harvey Awards nominees. And if you like free comics, here's everything we know about Free Comic Book Day 2027.