Grendel - Lineup - P. A. Nolte

1/ A handful of officers and a young woman view a police lineup through a one-way mirror.  The men in the lineup are dressed in various styles of suits and tuxedos.

Caption: I read a case study once.

2/ The lineup in near profile.  One face, shadowed beneath a shock of black hair, save for the white stripe above the left temple, stands out as serene amongst the nervous faces of the others.

Caption: A woman identified a man she had been watching on live television as the same man who had forced entry to her apartment and raped her.

3/ The mirror as seen over the heads of the lineup.

Caption: His alibi was sound.  He was on live television, amongst a group of peers, at the time of the attack.

Officer (digi): Thank you for your time, gentlemen.  You're free to go.

4/ The officers make an awkward attempt at consoling the woman.  In the background, through the window, Hunter Rose peers over his shoulder, waiting for the rest of the men to file out.  He is staring down the woman who he should not be able to see.

Caption: She had been watching the show.

Caption: She'd gotten confused.

5/ Close-up of the woman wiping a tear from her eyes, sniffling quietly.

6/ Grendel.  Perched on a rooftop, his forked staff hangs from his hand, glinting in the moonlight.

Caption: I looked into him anyway.

Grendel: Not in my city.

Grendel - Man Up - Liam Lachance

1

(torso of white woman, with muscular and figurine-sized man on shoulder)

MAN (GRENDEL): MAN UP! MAN UP! WAKE UP

2

(close-up of woman looking in mirror)

CHRISTINE: MANNING UP is what fucked me over- it’s why I’m angry enough to consider these things in the first place.

GRENDEL: MAN UP

3

(close up of woman’s squinting eye, behind dialogue)

CHRISTINE: He attacked me to ‘man up’ for himself– manning up is the whole issue!

GRENDEL: Okay, feminazi, so you’re going to let him off?

CHRISTINE: He was afraid of looking vulnerable so he attacked me. Now I attack him because I feel vulnerable. It’s childish.

GRENDEL: This isn’t a fucking ESSAY

4

(frame of GRENDEL standing with arms raised in air, screaming)

GRENDEL: IT’S CALLED REVENGE

5

(image of CHRISTINE looking at mirror, with GRENDEL looking up to her)

6

(image of GRENDEL yelling at CHRISTINE, who seems dejected)

CHRISTINE: Reacting without thinking isn’t revenge, it’s being a dog.

GRENDEL: PUPPERS HAVE THE MOST FUN

CHRISTINE: Too dumb to question how I’ve been trained: hurt to stop my hurt. In the end, I still feel shitty. How about stopping the hurt in the first place?

GRENDEL: BLA BLA BLA BLA BLA

7

(CHRISTINE looking into mirror, smiling)

CHRISTINE: There’s a smarter way.

Grendel - Devil by the Dozen - R.A. Wonsowski

Layout:
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Setting: unnamed post-apocolyptic wasteland, sunset.

Panel 1- looking to the left of panel, an emaciated but horrorizing army, dressed in desert garb, bearing all manner of crudely assembled weapons made from scrap (no guns, all melee type weapons, but with that homemade scavenged look). The leader, wearing a bishop's mitre, desert robes, and flare goggles, stands in front and carrying their standard (symbol on standard is the hooked cross your see on Blue Oyster Cult albums, like this...)

CAPTION: The North Atlantic Wastes, in the Year of our Lord 62,017.

VICAR: THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE, DEVIL! YOUR DAUGHTERS OR YOUR DEATHS!

Panel 2 - Cresting the horizon, dead center, is GRENDEL-PRIME. He is barely operational, but still walking with a warrior's pride. He drags behind him a large saw-toothed sword. Blood and oil seep from wounds in his shoulder.

NO COPY

Panel 3 - Same as Panel 2, but GRENDEL-PRIME is joined by a legion of warrior-women, age 15 to 50, dressed in ragged red clothes, ornamented with pieces of armor. All of them, their faces are painted red, with white about the eyes in the fashion of Grendel's mask. They all carry similar homemade weapons, fists raised ready to fight to the death.

DEVIL WOMEN (as one): RUS!!!

Grendel – Logical Endgame – MK Stangeland Jr.

(Of all the things that stuck with me from brushing up on who ‘Grendel’ is, the one thing that stuck with me is a note about how Mr. Wagner seems to make him a little more evil every time he writes the character.)

(4 Panels)

Panel 1: GRENDEL is sneaking a piece of candy away from a MOBSTER BABY and replacing it with a ticking explosive device disguised to look like a piece of candy.

SFX: tik tik tik tik tik tik tik tik

Panel 2: GRENDEL secretly pushes an aged GEEZER MOBSTER who is in a wheelchair into oncoming traffic. The GRENDEL disguise has somehow acquired a villainous mustache somehow.

GEEZER MOBSTER: GUAH!

SFX: HONK HONK!

Panel 3: GRENDEL kicks a puppy – just a regular old, innocent looking puppy – off a pier into shark-infested waters. In addition to the mustache, the GRENDEL costume now has a top hat and an old-timey villainous cape.

SFX: boot!

SFX: yip!

SFX: OHM NOM NOM!

GRENDEL: Muah ha ha!

Panel 4: MATT WAGNER is at his desk. He’s leaning forward, the hand supporting his head on his forehead. He has a wide-eyed ‘what am I doing?’ look on his face.

MATT WAGNER: I think I’ve officially made Grendel way too evil.

(END PAGE)

Grendel - Country Living - Grant McLaughlin

1 - Brian, a city-slicker turned recent-farmer, is out in his field, working the soil with a hoe.  The field appears to be mostly dirt, with little to no vegetation to be seen.  Brian's at least dressed for the part, although his clothing still looks relatively newish.  It's a hot one and Brian has been working all day - he's one tired guy.  A shadow coming from off-panel hints at an oncoming person.

CAPTION (BRIAN) (1): My Dad always talked about how great it was growing up in the country.

CAPTION (BRIAN) (2): Being out in the fresh air.

CAPTION (BRIAN) (3): Working the land.

CAPTION (BRIAN) (4): The satisfaction of living off your labour.

STACY (off-panel): I told you this was a bad idea.

2 - Brian takes a moment to rest and wipe his brow, perhaps using his hoe for support with the other hand.  Stacy, Brian's wife, comes onto panel, mad as heck.  She's dressed like a city-slicking fashionista - her outfit looks great but is completely inappropriate for the farm.  It's evident she's never done a day of work in her life and isn't about to start.

CAPTION (BRIAN): He failed to mention how back breaking the labour is.

STACY: You said it would be a new start.  A chance to get away from the dirt of the city.

good change of scenery.  A fresh start, away from the city.

3 - Stacy knocks the hoe from Brian's hand to the ground.  She continues to yell at him.  Brian is sad, but perhaps resigned to the outburst.

CAPTION (BRIAN): How stubborn the land can be.

STACY: But it looks to me like we traded one type of dirt for another.  And this one only grows weeds.

4 - Stacy turns to walk away.  Brian leans down to pick up the hoe, his face obscured.

CAPTION (BRIAN): And how air - no matter how fresh - will do nothing to ease the sting of disappointment.

STACY: My mother was right.  You're a bum and following you out here was a mistake.

5 - Stacy continues to walk away.  Brian has picked up the hoe, brandishing it as a weapon, a look of furious anger on his face.

CAPTION (BRIAN): But you know what they say.

STACY: Goodbye, Brian.

6 - Aerial shot.  We're looking down at the farm - classic farmhouse, dirty laneway, probably a barn, maybe a grainery, shed, or what-have-you.  We're far enough out (and perhaps angled) so that we can't see Brian or Stacy.  But we can see the field, which as said, is mostly dirt.  However, the weeds that are growing form a clear pattern of Grendel's mask.

CAPTION (BRIAN): As you reap, so shall you sow.

Grendel – THE DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND – Derek Adnams

Page 1 – (5 Panels)

1.1:  Exterior, day, eight year old Christine Spar sitting on a park bench under a maple tree, drawing in an old-school marble notebook.  She holds one pencil and there is another sitting next to her.  Shadows from the tree fall across her.  She is at peace.

Christine (caption):  I feel the red thing before he even opens his mouth.

Bully 1 (off panel):  Hey Spar . . .

Christine (caption):  The red thing that tells me how to make the hurt go away.

1.2:  Three bullies, boys between the ages of eight and ten.  Bully 1, their alpha-male leader, is in the middle, larger than the others.  Bully 2 and Bully 3 stand at each side, subservient.  Bully 3 is pointing at Christine while he laughs.

Bully 1:  You gonna’ visit your crazy mother in the nut-house this weekend?

Bully 2:  Yeah!  Psycho mom!

Bully 3:  HA HA!

Christine (caption):  I laugh at them laughing at me.

1.3:  Christine’s face, smiling slightly.  Her head is downturned, like Private Pyle at the end of the first half of Full Metal Jacket.  There is a line of shadow going vertically across each eye, mimicking the classic Grendel mask.

Christine (caption):  They just can’t hear it yet.

 

Christine (caption):  They don’t know.

1.4:  Dynamic panel of Christine leaping at her tormentors, almost vertical to the ground, each hand raised over her head and clutching a pencil.  Bully 1 is recoiling in fear while his two minions run off in opposite directions.

Christine (caption):  So I tell them.

1.5:  The grass of the park, the shadow of Christine plunging the pencils into the eyes of Bully 1, blood spurting from the wounds.  On the ground is Christine’s open notebook, small drops of blood on the pages, and we can see what Christine was drawing: a pencil sketch of the Grendel mask, mirroring her face in Panel 1.3.

Christine (caption):  I tell them who my father is.

 

 

Why Grendel? - Derek Adnams

 . . . because Grendel by Matt Wagner is how I discovered that there were comic books made by folks other than Marvel and DC – and that they were incredible!

For those unfamiliar with the opus that is Grendel, here’s a 30,000 foot view:

To paraphrase the title’s creator, Grendel is a study of the nature of aggression.  It begins with a single man, Hunter Rose, chronicling his rise to reign over a criminal empire in Devil by the Deed, then goes on to tell the tales of others whose lives were impacted by the force that is Grendel, taking readers through an epic journey ultimately concluding in the 26^th century and a world where the nature of aggression has become the nature of man. 

But to me, a kid with aspirations of creating comic books in the late 1980’s, Grendel was so much more.  Wagner’s vision of where a comic could take the reader, and the way he built upon a singular premise, impacted me in a very visceral way.  The scope of the story was something I had never seen before, at least not in “Big Two” comic books, stuck in perpetual second act story telling.  I was reading graphic literature, each arc having a beginning, middle and end, feeding into the larger narrative.

 

Originally, in Comico Primer #2, (and what a happy day it was when I finally found a copy at a comic shop in who-knows-where), the initial three issue Grendel series and then when he published the art deco gorgeousness of Devil by the Deed as a back-up in Mage, Wagner handled the art for his creation.  When the Grendel regular series debuted from Comico, he was focusing on writing and the art was handled by the Pander Brothers.  The Pander Brothers would be the first of an all-star line-up of artists, including Bernie Mireault, Tim Sale, John K. Snyder III, Jay Geldhof and Wagner himself.  I remember being initially disappointed that Wagner wasn’t drawing the regular series, but that disappointment turned to wonder as I saw how the different art teams brought a personality unique to the story and how Wagner wrote to the artistic strength of each collaborator.  As opposed to a “Grendel house style”, each arc was, and still is, alive with the vision of the artist intertwining with the goal of Wagner’s story, a marriage of words and pictures that epitomizes what true collaboration can create.

I had the pleasure of meeting Matt Wagner at New York Comic Con a few years ago.  I waited in line, shook his hand, and said “thank you.”

So “Why Grendel?”  Because if Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns is the reason I love to write comics, Matt Wagner’s Grendel is the reason I love to write independent comics.