In 2018, writer Donny Cates and artist Ryan Stegman connected the characters of Beowulf and Grendel to the long established character Venom in the first four issues of a series later collected into a trade paperback titled Rex. Some background to the character Venom: in 1984, Marvel published a series called Secret Wars, which connected to pretty much every one of their existing titles and was meant as a springboard for a toy line. In the series, Spider-man is given a new black costume which, as years went by, was found to be a symbiotic alien life form. When it became attached to Eddie Brock, the character Venom was born. In this incarnation, the symbiotes are given an origin that stretched back billions of years with characters known as Celestials making contact with another called Knull. As these Celestials were creating the universe, Knull stole part of their essence and created a weapon to use against them, eventually being defeated and cast into the void of space. Knull would eventually bond his weapon with living creatures and send them out while maintaining a mental link. One of these creatures found itself on earth and bonded with Grendel, pictured as a flying dragon, but while the people cry out for Beowulf, Thor arrives instead and his lightning both defeats the creature and severs the mental bond between Knull and his symbiote creations. As of the time of this writing, there has been no link between the Grendel creature and other characters such as Big Mother from Captain Marvel, and Beowulf did not appear in the initial story arc.