Grendel: RFD

The Pander Bros run is a good yarn but I hate their art. And the problem with Grendel is that your apperciation for the later material can be dependent on having read all the earlier series. The Sale run is a great primer for War Child, but War Child is probably the in-continuity Grendel story that stands on its own feet better than any of the others. Plus its got Wagner playing with lots of pop-culture and genre elements : the post-apocalyptic setting, light-sabres, western visuals, vampires, cyber-punk stuff....When I read it at the time (I remember that lesbian scene very well, too) it lead me to buy as many bac-issues as I could find.

I've never read any of the non-Wagner Grendel tales stuff, sorry.

But I will recommend Mage. All 3 ( I think) series..

though I didn't like the computer re-colouring they did for the Image reprints of Mage 1

I was always impressed by the way that the Grendel story moved outwards from a Batman-analogue to Full Global Post-Apocalypse OMG.

Grendel Tales: Devils and Deaths by Darko Macan and Edvin Biukovic is absolutely classic.

Wagner personally commissioned Rucka to write "a hot lesbian scene" for Past Prime. True fact!

i should just stick with graphic novels these days.

so you end up with, in the space of about two years, three different Mage series on the stands, but one of them was reprinting one from fifteen years before, and one of them was reprinting the one that was still going on. Or something. if only one of us could use Google to sort this out!

anyway I saw the big fat Mage 1 collection and two of the wee skinny Mage 2 re-serialisations on a bottom shelf at K!n0kun!ya on the weekend. the new colours on Mage 1 look pretty bad on glossy paper (but then so did the Joe Matt/Wagner colours in the oversized Donning collections from the eighties)... but the Mage 2 collections were on matte paper and the colours look pretty good there! so once they do finally collect 2 into one book I guess I'll be checking to see the paper stock before I head to the cash register.

For some reason I've never really checked Grendel before, but now I've been reading the first of the new Grendel Omnibuses, which (according to the sleeve) has all the Hunter Rose stories in it... But to me it feels all the stories are simply abouth how cool this sociopath hyper-talented super ninja killer is, which gets pretty boring after a while. Am I missing something here? Are the other Grendel stories different from these ones, or is this all there is to it?

All the other Grendel stories are different from this one (which was I think backup strips in something else - possibly Mage?)

yeah Grendel was originally the backup feature in Mage. the only stuff I think is really worth reading is that weird two-fer about the diamond business.

the omnibuses are terrible because they put hundreds of '00s stories about Hunter Rose being cool at the start, instead of as auxiliary material years after the story ends. you're only meant to read the original 48 pages of that stuff before it becomes something bigger and better.

it feels all the stories are simply abouth how cool this sociopath hyper-talented super ninja killer is, which gets pretty boring after a while.

I read the original series back in the day and there isn't much more than that. I remember some of the stories being interesting but the Grendel "concept", often in the background, never really adds up to much.

The issues I still like are the two two-part stories (Devil Tracks and Devil Eyes) which Wagner drew himself where he used unusual layouts and art -- one with 5x5 panel grid layout, the other with tall page-height panels and Kurtzman-esque art.

Tuomas is talking about all the Black White & Red miniseries

that's a bold endorsement given Mage 3 probably won't be started for 12 years!

― kit, Friday, 15 April 2005 13:45 (7 years ago)

holding strong

I'm pretty sure Mage 2 finished but I gave up after #1! when it turned out that the story had started in a #0 or #½ issue that I would have had to pay about $20 to mail-order from the States. I'll buy a collection eventually I guess.

― kit, Friday, 15 April 2005 16:00 (7 years ago)

nope. I think I got most of the first dozen issues out of 50c bins but never even finished reading those

Devil Tracks! yeah that's the one I was thinking of. great little piece

That should be in the second volume, which contains #1-19 of the actual Grendel series. Which is good expansive stuff - it only looks small compared to the stuff the in the third volume, which is due out in June apparently.

smh at including all of the Hunter Rose, so cool stuff in the first volume - I suppose it gets it out of the way, but it'll end up a bit Cerebus as regards what you would give to someone to get them reading.