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 – 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.