Grendel

June 7, 2004
Grendel is a character who comes close to defying description. He's inhabited a number of people over time, and the only constants through these stories are his psychosis and distinctive mask. In this chapter of Wagner's multi-generational saga, Grendel possesses a down-on-his-luck stage manager in a near-future New York, and pushes him into a murder spree. This tale, which originally appeared as a three-part miniseries in 1987, is a product of its time. Wagner's oblique script seemed daring and naturalistic then, but now comes off as coy. Similarly, some of his narrative techniques seemed groundbreaking at the time (e.g., the narrative captions displayed as handwritten journal entries), but now feel quaintly similar to contemporary works like Frank Miller's Batman: Year One
and Alan Moore's Watchmen
. Mireault's art ages better (with the exception of his design for the police detective, who sports a Flock of Seagulls haircut), retaining its "underground comix" edge and conveying a sense of a desolate, urban environment without sacrificing clean lines or clear storytelling. Given Wagner's reluctance to resort to straightforward exposition, this isn't a book for casual readers, who will likely miss some of the resonance that Grendel aficionados will find rewarding. However, longtime fans will welcome this reprint of one of the more innovative chapters in Wagner's 50-plus–part saga.

May 7, 2007
T
his 25th anniversary edition reprints what began as an inconspicuous backup feature but has blossomed into a classic dark saga of the ultimate counter-Batman. Hunter Rose is a wealthy and glamorous socialite who also is the masked assassin Grendel, master of the underworld but obsessed with destroying his archfoe, the cursed, centuries-old wolfman Argent. Meanwhile, Rose's innocent ward, Stacey, discovers his secret and coldly plots against both villains, becoming monstrous herself in the process. The fundamental story is silly, over-the-top pulp fiction. Wagner makes it readable and memorable first by filtering the action through several layers of narrator/interpreter so that a reader isn't confronted by gruesome lunacy but is encouraged to imagine the lurid details. Secondly, Wagner experiments with the form of comics by turning each page into an elegant Art Deco design in which blocks of narrative text are embedded; Finally, he succeeds in tantalizing readers' hope and dread that some of Grendel's aloof, fierce spirit may be alive in all of us. For better or worse, he helped introduce the age of the antihero in comics.

August 25, 2008
Wagner's multifarious Grendel character takes a leap several centuries into the future with his 10-part God and the Devil series, originally serialized in 1989 and remastered in 2003, collected in a dense graphic novel that will serve as a hearty meal for serious fans but may baffle newcomers. It's the year 2530 and most of the world's surface is ravaged wasteland. A newly reconstituted Vatican lords over the livable areas of the American West, its corrupt hierarchy greedily raking in donations for the construction of a Babel-like tower, while instituting a savage new Inquisition to keep the faithful in line. Two things stand in the way of iron-fisted Pope Innocent XLII: straight-laced investigator Orion Assante and the masked nihilist trickster Grendel himself. Wagner's take on the church as evil empire comes straight out of the Middle Ages and works quite well for a pseudo-postapocalyptic America. But while the money-grubbing clergy (and their mercenary guards) are quite adequate villains, Assante is a blank protagonist. The story lines are densely tangled, and Wagner's penchant for overwrought narration and random moments of ultraviolence throws more layers on top of it all.

May 1, 2008
In the mid-1990s, Wagner wrote and drew two adventures pitting his creation Grendel, an early star of independent comics, against one of the biggest corporate-owned superheroes, the venerable Caped Crusader. The first tale sees young socialite Hunter Rose, the first to wear the mask ofcriminal mastermind Grendel, come to Gotham for an audacious scheme. In the second, a cyborg from the future, Grendel-Prime (one of many characters carrying on the Grendel legacy) travels back through time to retrieve the skull of Hunter Rose from a museum. Just as none of Wagners accounts of the original Grendels various successors have matched those featuring the original incarnation (whom he has continued to revisit in flashback stories long after killing off the character), Batmans confrontation with Hunter Rose proves more compelling than his clash with Grendel-Prime. Yet both are given a boost by Wagners boldly economical drawing style and effective layouts. The powerful rendition of Batman that Wagner has developed here is the prelude to his equally impressive later work on the Caped Crusader, sans Grendel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)

Starred review from November 17, 2023

Hunter Rose is a dashing, best-selling author worshipped by the 1980s Manhattan social scene. What the cocktail party cognoscenti don't know is that Rose is also Grendel, a merciless masked criminal mastermind dedicated to becoming the undisputed leader of all organized crime on the East Coast by any means necessary. His only redeeming quality is his deep love for his adopted daughter, Stacy. She just so happens to also share a close bond with an obsessive vigilante dedicated to ending Grendel's reign of terror. Creator Wagner (The Sandman Mystery Theater Compendium, Vol. 1) thoroughly reimagines this initial installment in the ongoing saga of his most enduring and beloved creation, which was first published in 1986, not only revising the script and completely redrawing every single page but adding more than 100 new pages to further flesh out the characters and world, resulting in a much richer and more nuanced story. VERDICT A well-crafted saga exploring the nature of evil, drawn from elements of the crime, horror, and science fiction genres. A perfect starting point for newcomers, while longtime Grendel readers should be thrilled at how Wagner has reinvigorated what was already considered a classic story.--Thomas L. Batten

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