Valhalla (comics)

Valhalla
The cover of the 12th Valhalla album. Thor and Loki face two giantesses.
Publication information
Publisher	Carlsen Comics
Format	Ongoing series
Genre	Historical
Publication date	1979
No. of issues	15
Main character(s)	Thor, Odin and Loki
Creative team
Created by	Henning Kure and Arne Stenby
Written by	Peter Madsen, Hans Rancke-Madsen, Per Vadmand and Henning Kure.
Artist(s)	Peter Madsen
Colorist(s)	Søren Håkonsson, Jesper Ejsing

Valhalla is a Danish comic book series. Originally commissioned for and published by Interpresse, it has been published by Carlsen Comics since 1987.

During 1976 and 1977, Henning Kure and Arne Stenby at Interpresse, a Danish publishing house, were planning to create a comic series based on the world of the Vikings. They offered the place of illustrating the comic to the young cartoonist Peter Madsen, who accepted, and also enlisted Hans Rancke-Madsen. The team set out to draw the first album (similar format as Tintin and Asterix) in a series of the adventures of the Norse gods, based on the Elder Eddas. Thor would very much be the hero of this series, along with Odin and Loki, Odin's blood brother.

Valhalla started in 1978 as a strip running in the Danish newspaper "Politiken". The first album came out in 1979. It was very well received, with several subsequent albums.

The tone of the albums has focused on humor, but the characters, and much of the plot, are based on the stories and legends in the Elder Eddas, and many albums have often featured deeper human issues. The albums are of high quality, and each took one or several years to produce. The first album was released in 1979, the second in 1982, and the thirteenth in 2006. They are very much in the tradition of finely drawn and well plotted Franco-Belgian comics like The Adventures of Tintin or Asterix, which also served as inspiration for the Valhalla comics.