#Hunter Rose

[comicbookcovers]

Grendel: Behold The Devil #0, July 2007, cover by Matt Wagner

[gacha-alex]

Top 10 My Comfort Characters

Spider-Man (Marvel Comics)

Batman (DC Comics)

Grendel (Matt Wagner Grendel)

Takeshi Hongo (Shin Kamen Rider)

Spawn (Todd McFarlane Spawn)

Scorpion (Mortal Kombat)

Sheen (The Bedfellows)

Stolas (Helluva Boss)

Jeff The Killer (Creepypasta)

Mystery Burns (Doll Eye)

[soranatus]

My friend made me these lovely Grendel fan art pieces for my birthday a couple months ago! The first one is Grendel, and the second is the GrendelFam with Stacy checking up on her co-parents being Totally Normal eksheksh

[comic-art-showcase]

Grendel by Matt Wagner

[evilhorse]

Back Issue magazine #125

[cantsayidont]

It's hard to think of many comics works that have gone as much mid-publication and post-publication second-guessing as Matt Wagner's GRENDEL: DEVIL BY THE DEED, a tragic sort-of superhero saga about the battle between a suave fiend called Grendel (sort of an evil Batman by way of Fantomas) and his theoretically heroic but generally monstrous werewolf-like foe Grendel, centered on a young girl named Stacy Palumbo, who was the adoptive daughter of Grendel's alter ego, mystery novelist Hunter Rose. Wagner began the original version of the story in 1982, but after three installments, he pulled the plug, frustrated that his craft still fell short of his ambition.

In 1985, he completely retooled the story and ran it in serialized form in his fantasy series MAGE: THE HERO DISCOVERED, making the unusual choice to step back from the original version's conventional comic book narrative in favor of prose narration (ostensibly part of an in-universe book by Stacy Palumbo's daughter Christine, written years after the fact) with stylish Art Deco layouts, using inventive design to cover for some still dodgy figure work (compensated somewhat by Rich Rankin's inks). This was much more satisfactory to everyone except, apparently, Wagner, so he kept tinkering with it. The serialized version of DEVIL BY THE DEED (subsequently released as a graphic novel by Comico in 1986) was in color — I guess by Wagner himself, as no other colorist is credited in the MAGE issues — and looked pretty good, but when Dark Horse reprinted the story in the '90s, Wagner had it recolored by Bernie Mireault and Kathryn Delaney, giving it a significantly but not dramatically different look. Here are the two color versions; the left is the original MAGE version, the right the Mireault/Delaney version:

I'm not entirely sure if the recoloring (and relettering) was done for aesthetic reasons or if the original color separations were gone or no longer usable. While Wagner has always owned GRENDEL and MAGE, when Comico went bankrupt, many of the physical assets of the GRENDEL series ended up in limbo for many years before Wagner was able to reclaim them, so it may have been necessary to reshoot and recolor the story from the original art. In any case, while the Mireault/Delaney version is somewhat more dramatic, I find the loss of the original warm Deco vibe somewhat regrettable.

In the early '00s, Wagner returned to the Hunter Rose character with a miniseries called GRENDEL: BLACK, WHITE & RED, a series of stylish but not very pleasant short stories distinguished by using no color other than red. Wagner then had Chris Pitzer recolor DEVIL BY THE DEED along the same lines, in which version the above page looks like this:

I can't say I find this a great improvement — I think the B&W&Red thing (or B&W&Gold, etc.) is a gimmick best taken in small doses, and it makes the previously colorful DEVIL BY THE DEED seem rather drab. However, Wagner apparently considers it the definitive version, and it's what's now collected in the GRENDEL OMNIBUS books.

Wagner apparently still wasn't satisfied, so after the pandemic started, he decided to completely redo DEVIL BY THE DEED, not just remastering and recoloring it, but redrawing and rewriting the entire story, in the process expanding it to about three times its original length (and making an already dark story considerably meaner and bloodier). In the revised MASTER'S EDITION version (colored by Cameron Mazzia and Wagner's son Brennan), the equivalent of the above page looks like this:

Wagner's mature style is obviously more accomplished than when he was a teenager (40 years earlier!), but I can't help feeling that something has been lost in the process. The original color and most of the Art Deco motifs have gone (there are a few smatterings of the latter, but not many), but maybe the biggest loss is the sense of invention. I was always impressed at Wagner's boldness in completely reimagining his own story to work around what he felt were his own youthful limitations, and there's little left of that in the MASTER EDITION even if the results are more polished.

[mrrubbersuitman]

https://www.etsy.com/.../batman-grendel-vol-1-1-and-2... NEW TO THE SHOP. VF/NM Batman Grendel 1 and 2 lot. Available through the link for $25.00

[comicarthistory]

Page from Batman/Grendel #1. 1993. Art by Matt Wagner.

[cryptocollectibles]

Grendel Black White & Red 4 Issue Complete Set (1998-1999) by Dark Horse Comics

Written by Matt Wagner, drawn by various, covers by Matt Wagner.

[nefarious-616-necromancer]

[gacha-alex]

Hunter Rose aka Grendel

[soranatus]

Batman/Grendel (1993)

[comic-art-showcase]

Grendel by Matt Wagner

[stormyboi7]

some scuffed grendel doodles (ft. my friend’s pen that she lent to me for the night because my pencil broke)

[cantsayidont]

Originally published by Comico and later by Dark Horse, Matt Wagner's Grendel is a creator-owned series that's evolved over the years from costumed adventure to political drama to postapocalyptic action. Most of the stories are now collected in a series of massive Omnibus volumes, which have been reissued in the past couple of years with new covers.

Vol. 1 includes most of the original Hunter Rose saga, about the original Grendel character, a dapper but ruthless and sadistic costumed criminal mastermind battling a werewolf-like antihero called Argent. The Omnibus includes the "Devil by the Deed" storyline originally serialized in Wagner's MAGE series in 1985 (recolored in grayscale and red rather than full color), plus several other sets of stories about Hunter Rose. It's not quite comprehensive: It omits the early, abortive Comico issues Wagner retooled as "Devil by the Deed" (which were reprinted in the 2007 GRENDEL ARCHIVES, and which Wagner considers apocryphal), and crossovers between Hunter Rose and Batman (from 1994) and The Shadow (from 2014). Probably the most peculiar omission is that it excludes the 1989 SILVERBACK miniseries by William Messner-Loebs and John Peck, which presents the origin of Argent; I don't know if Wagner has disowned that series or if the assets needed to reprint it are no longer available.

Vol. 2 covers the first 20 issues of the Comico GRENDEL series, and take place about 40 years after Hunter Rose's death, in a near-future world where Hunter's biographer Christine Spar, daughter of Hunter's adoptive daughter Stacy Palumbo, becomes Grendel. The volume actually begins with a later series called "Devil Child," by Wagner's long-time editor (and sister-in-law) Diana Schutz and Tim Sale (originally published as a miniseries in the late 1990s), which deals with Stacy's fate; it is creatively accomplished but extremely bleak (and needs CWs for sexual assault and spousal abuse). The ongoing series, drawn first by the Pander Bros. in a somewhat dated but generally appealing anime-inspired style, later by Bernie Mireault, is a tragic but engrossing saga of rage and revenge, somewhat more fantastical than the Hunter Rose stories. The Christine Spar story is probably the most compelling and emotionally engaging section of the whole story, although the followup, tracing the subsequent fate of her boyfriend Brian, is again very bleak.

Vol. 3 covers the remainder of the Comico series, which ended with issue #40 due to Comico's bankruptcy. This moves the timeline forward hundreds of years, first with a set of experimental (if somewhat annoying) transitional issues, and then with an engrossing but rather frosty saga of political machinations and civil war, as an ambitious businessman called Orion Assante leads an insurrection against the power of a future Catholic Church and a plague of vampirism, with the dubious aid of a mentally unstable man named Eppie Thatcher, who assumes the Grendel role and may or may not be demonically possessed. The transitional issues at the beginning are rough going stylistically, but the main story is interesting and elaborately plotted science fiction, marred chiefly by the deliberate emotional distancing of the main character (CWs apply for incest, along with a lot of sometimes icky violence), whose death decades later brings the arc to a close.

Vol. 4 includes the GRENDEL: WAR CHILD miniseries, originally intended as issues #41–50 of the Comico series, which introduce the cyborg warrior Grendel Prime and deal with the fallout following Orion Assante's death. This is a fairly conventional episodic adventure, probably at least partly inspired by LONE WOLF & CUB, with the Terminator-like Prime traveling through the apocalyptic wastes with Orion's son and heir Jupiter. It's most interesting in how it addresses the various ramifications of the previous storyline, although the almost dismissive way Wagner dispenses with that story's survivors is off-putting. This is followed by PAST PRIME, by Wagner and Greg Rucka, which is a rather too purple illustrated prose novel about a later adventure of Grendel Prime and Susan Veraghen, one of the characters from WAR CHILD. This is followed by DEVIL'S QUEST, originally serialized elsewhere, which is actually the prelude to the second Batman-Grendel crossover in 1996; Wagner apparently hasn't yet negotiated the rights to reprint those crossovers again (they were last collected in 2008), which is puzzling if you haven't read that story, although QUEST has some of the best and most experimental artwork of Wagner's career.

Vols. 5 and 6, not pictured, reprint the GRENDEL TALES series, which were Wagner's attempt to open up his concept to other writer/artist teams, most published as miniseries by Dark Horse between 1992 and 1998. Unfortunately, all are set in the world of Grendel Prime, full of cliched postapocalyptic horrors and boring warrior-clan bullshit with none of the political scheming and character conflicts that made the Orion saga interesting; there's some nice art, but the endless parade of threadbare concepts, throwaway characters, and nearly inevitable grim denouements becomes wearing quickly. Of the more than 800 pages of material, the only installments worth a look are FOUR DEVILS, ONE HELL (more for its stylish Teddy Kristiansen art than its typically pompous James Robinson script) and HOMECOMING (by Pat McEowon and Dave Cooper), a downbeat story in which Susan Veraghen goes on a bloody, leather-clad rampage to avenge the death of her former girlfriend.

I very much hope Wagner will work something out with DC to reissue the Batman/Grendel crossovers of the '90s. The first, with Batman and Hunter Rose, is by far the best, with an elaborately constructed secondary plot enlivening the shaggy dog story of the main confrontation and extremely intricate artwork; the second, with a time-travel Grendel Prime, is not as artistically adventuresome and is basically a TERMINATOR story with Batman, although it's worth a look to see what the DEVIL'S QUEST story was all about.

Wagner's Grendel/Shadow crossover is a fun romp, and works better than Wagner's misfired THE SHADOW: YEAR ONE, which made me miss the Howard Chaykin/Andy Helfer/Kyle Baker version.

[byronicherobracket]

The Byronic Hero Bracket: Qualifying Round Batch A #14

Hunter Rose from Grendel vs. Driver from Drive (2011)

Reasons below the cut (spoilers for both)

(All sources from TV Tropes)

Hunter Rose:

Hunter Rose in Grendel, who becomes an arch-criminal simply because he thinks he deserves to dominate everybody else on the planet because he's so much more intelligent and imaginative than they are, and becoming a gangster is the quickest way. Gradually deconstructed, as Matt Wagner became increasingly moral as he got older and started to gradually write Hunter as more and more of a sadistic thug.

Driver:

Driver in Drive (2011). A complete enigma. Nameless and largely silent throughout the film, Driver is attractive and brooding with an air of sadness. Despite his cold and icy demeanour as well as his career as a dangerous criminal, it is clear through his affection for Irene and her child that he has a good heart.