I, like many of you, have been excited for the Nordguard Trilogy since the teaser art almost a year ago. There hasn’t been an update on it for a while, but I finally got to see some of the pages from the upcoming first book in the trilogy, Across Thin Ice. It’s violent, it’s gorgeous, and it’s really, really blue.

During Further Confusion 2010, Blotch held a panel showing off concept art and pages from his upcoming graphic novel. He explained more about the story and characters, and answered questions, the first of which being, “How graphic is it?” (Nice, furries).

Let’s just say, don’t be expecting Dog Days of Summer. According to Blotch, Nordguard is not sexually explicit, and is a deeper story with more serious characters. Across Thin Ice follows a sled team of rescue dogs at the turn of the century in northeast Canada. According to him, graphic novel was influenced by European comics, but is more of an action adventure story than a historical drama.

Blotch said that the story is largely centered around survival, with the team struggling to get back to civilization. Much of the novel follows the teams journey through the ice and snow, where “every sanctuary is a colder, more miserable hell.” The body count for the book will be high, and many of the main character won’t be around for book two (keep that in mind, everyone who bawled during Eight Below). Plus is makes all that concept art of bright eyed youthful dogs in their underwear that much eviler.

We learned more about the ideas in the graphic novel, like the specieism, and the dichotomy between the civilized southern region, and the rugged north. There’s also the concept of how civilized animals eat meat (any hard vore fans out there?), and there are more dangers out there than just Mother Nature. There may be a villainous tiger, and there’s definitely something about diamond mines.

The project is a much larger endeavor than Blotch’s previous graphic novel, but he’s confident he’ll be able to finish.

“Dog Days was the test comic to see if I could do this, Blotch said. “I whipped out a page a day on that. This one takes three or four days a page.”

There’s an obvious Jack London influence on the book, which Blotch admits. Unlike London, though, Nordguard’s author has actually been to the north, even going so far as to get strapped to a dog sled and pull it around snowy Minnesota. That’s dedication to the art, folks.

And really the dedication to the project is coming through a lot. The sheer amount of concept art, clay models, environment pieces, and historical research has created a really interesting world, and I’m looking forward to what Blotch does with it.

If you haven’t already, head over theNordguard website. A lot of the artwork shown at the panel is available for viewing there, along with character bios. Across Thin Ice is tentatively scheduled for a summer release, possibly at Anthrocon or Comic-Con International. Make sure to pick it up!