In 1982, a small publishing company, Comico, published its second issue of an anthology title named Primer (sometimes referred to as Comico Primer). This issue featured the first appearance of Matt Wagner’s Grendel. In 1983, three issues of a Matt Wagner Grendel series were also published; the storyline was never fully completed, but was later reworked as a backup series in another Wagner title, Mage, and this version of the character is the one that caught on most successfully. In the original stories, Grendel is a man named Hunter Rose who is, by all accounts, brilliant and bored and both incredibly athletic and brutal, an acclaimed author and also a costumed criminal who runs an organized crime syndicate. The Hunter Rose Grendel is an enemy of the status quo, someone who revels in destruction, and whose main enemy, Argent, is a supernatural half man – half wolf who works both with law enforcement and independently in his fight.
This character and the mythology that was created around him have been adapted in far too many ways to do them or the various writers and artists justice in a summary, but there are common themes and elements that tend to run through each that link back to the epic poem and its Grendel character. For example, while Christine Spar, the second Grendel, has a compelling motivation for taking on the persona, she operates in ways that positions her outside of the established society, becoming increasingly more violent the longer she maintains it.
This violence directed against a wider society is similar to that of the poem’s Grendel, and in the numerous incarnations following that of the character Christine Spar, the concept of an individual willingly following his or her violent instincts becomes a concept of institutionalized violence, with numerous Grendels who have specific territories and establish a hierarchy headed by the Grendel Khan. Similar to the poem’s Grendel, these various Grendels often meet violent ends, but the reasons behind their determination to disrupt society and commit violent acts are rarely clear. And, as the poem shows, the various Grendel series show the tenuous nature of power attained through violence, as society in general crumbles under the Grendels’ rule in a way that is similar to the fates of the societies that have fallen or will fall as described in the poem.
This character and the mythology that was created around him have been adapted in far too many ways to do them or the various writers and artists justice in a summary, but there are common themes and elements that tend to run through each that link back to the epic poem and its Grendel character. For example, while Christine Spar, the second Grendel, has a compelling motivation for taking on the persona, she operates in ways that positions her outside of the established society, becoming increasingly more violent the longer she maintains it.
This violence directed against a wider society is similar to that of the poem’s Grendel, and in the numerous incarnations following that of the character Christine Spar, the concept of an individual willingly following his or her violent instincts becomes a concept of institutionalized violence, with numerous Grendels who have specific territories and establish a hierarchy headed by the Grendel Khan. Similar to the poem’s Grendel, these various Grendels often meet violent ends, but the reasons behind their determination to disrupt society and commit violent acts are rarely clear. And, as the poem shows, the various Grendel series show the tenuous nature of power attained through violence, as society in general crumbles under the Grendels’ rule in a way that is similar to the fates of the societies that have fallen or will fall as described in the poem.