by Matt Wagner
Dark Horse Comics
For those of you who don't know, Grendel is not a good guy. Nor is the story related in any why with the Beowulf saga. The initial Grendel stories revolve around Hunter Rose, who is a best selling novelist and at night is a ruthless crime lord named Grendel. As the original Grendel comic series and mini-series continued, the Grendel persona is pass onto later generations of people far into the future. But this book, Behold the Devil, is back in the world of Hunter Rose. Telling the tale of a two week period where the notebooks and journals of Hunter Rose were missing, we see a more vulnerable side of Grendel. Feeling like he's being followed, Grendel must rely on magical tools to resolve the problem he is experiencing.
I have been a fan of Wagner's work for decades. Though I don't have all the Grendel stories, I have read enough to know about his world. And I think that readers of Behold the Devil, unless they know much of the previous stories, might not appreciate the book as much as I did. That's not to say that the it's not worth reading. Any comic fan should pick this up and give it a try. I've often considered Grendel to be like an anti Batman. Hunter Rose is like an evil, amoral Bruce Wayne.
The artwork is striking. With mostly black and white line drawings, Wagner also adds red to enhance they impact of the narrative. The red he uses is always the same shade. And when there is wine, or roses, or blood (especially blood) is when the red color appears.
I'm going to put this book in the libraries adult non-fiction area. As I allude to, there is quite a bit of blood. Also, some profane language and nudity hit the trifecta in things that parents might get upset about. So I'll keep this away from the young adult area.
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