God how I loved this series back in the day (1984!). I just found out that a Grendel movie has been greenlit, so I've been all into reading about what Matt Wagner has been up to (I half-heartedly bought the first couple of issues of Mage: The Hero Defined when it came out, but I'm totally not into the comic scene anymore) and I was very surprised to know that the Grendel series is STILL going on!
The Grendel Cycle Era (2022-2603)
The Grendel Cycle corresponds to the back-ups in Mage that became Grendel: Devil by the Deed (which served to relaunch the title), the 40-issue Comico series, and Grendel: War Child, originally intended as issues #41-50 of that series.
Chronologically and within the narrative, this era begins in 2022 with Devil by the Deed, the study of Hunter Rose penned by Chrstine Spar, the daughter of Stacy Palumbo-Olliver, who as a child lived as Hunter Rose's adopted daughter and who was instrumental in Rose's defeat and destruction.
The narrative then follows Christine Spar, whose son (named Anson) was kidnapped by a Kabuki performer, Tujiro XIV. Stealing Hunter Rose's classic costume and fork, Spar became Grendel and pursued the performer to San Fancisco, where she discovered Tujiro XIV to be a vampire with a taste for young boys, keeping one eye of his victims, including her son. In her investigations, besides killing most of the Kabuki troupe, Spar fell in love with Brian Li Sung, the stage manager of Tujiro XIV's San Francisco venue, and began to protect him from the vampire. After much wrangling, Spar defeated the vampire, seemingly imprisoning him in the form of a cat, though that cat escaped. Intending to give up being Grendel and to leave Brian Li Sung without the grief attached to her life, Spar then returned to New York, where Argent, the wolf who had been crippled by Hunter Rose, assisted by a policeman named Wiggins and sporting a lie-detecting implanted eye, led a police investigation of Grendel's return. Brian Li Sung followed Spar to New York but was brutalized by a San Francisco policeman who had also made the journey. Spar, in response, killed the policeman and, feeling her life destroyed by the police, confronted Argent in a battle in which both killed the other. The date was 30 September 2026.
In the wake of Spar's death, her lover, Brian Li Sung, had inherited journals -- those of Hunter Rose and Stacy Palumbo, which Spar had used for research, and Spar's own journals narrating both her love for him and her consumption by the spirit of Grendel. Believing he could not smuggle these past the police and out of New York, Brian Li Sung took an off-Broadway job and lived in poverty, living to engage vicariously in the journals he'd been left. Adusting to the harshness of New York as well, he began drinking heavily and journaling himself. Believing that he had seen Spar's ghost in the theatre he managed, he created a Grendel mask to help conjure her again. When a security guard interrupted, Brian Li Sung viciously beat him. Later, assailed in Central Park, he killed his assailant. Brian Li Sung then began to feel that he had been literally possessed by the spirit of Grendel. He began to hunt Captain Wiggins, the policeman with the metalic eye who had been Argent's assistant. In Central Park, Brian Li Sung resisted his madness and was shot dead by Wiggins. The date was 13 February 2027.
Brian Li Sung's series was the last Grendel I had read. Christine Spars' story arc has been collected as "Devils Legacy" and Brian's is "The Devil Inside"
Captain Albert Wiggins became a celebrity, penning a series of novels about Hunter Rose, ironically the only one of the three Grendels that he had never met. His life became one of luxury. He had a nice house and a young wife. But the incessant pressures of wealth and celebrity, as well as a nagging wife and an apparent malfunction in his robotic eye that distorted figures into bloated liars, began to make Wiggins's life an incessant torment. Enraged that his wife responded to his pleas for help with more nagging, he stabbed her through the eye, killing her and apparently leaving himself for the police.
By 2070, corporations had replaced nations as the dominant powers. Charles Dore, head of Omni Broadcasting and Entertainment Systems (OBES), the biggest corporation in the world, watched over a line of Grendel-related products. His opposition withing OBES was Harold White, who wanted the world's governments and their intervention eliminated. Misunderstandings ensued under these strains and nuclear war broke out. The Mideast and its oil was annihilated and irradiated.
Massive social upheaval followed. Solar power came to dominate, and a mass migration occured as people moved towards the sunny equator. America became the United Californian Systems of America. The massive cities of the American east coast became deserted except for gangs, one of which adopted Grendel as their totem, advocating penance for mankind's aggressive nature. As society stabilized, the Catholic Church, in a modified corporate form, took on increased importance. It came to refer to "Grendel" instead of "Satan." Drug use proliferated, including one so dangerous it was also called "Grendel."
After Orion's seclusion and death, his wife, Laurel Kennedy Assante, seized power as regent, cloistering the young heir, Jupiter Assante, until he was ready to rule. A large Grendel dressed entirely in black broke into the complex where Jupiter was being held kidnapped him. Laurel Kennedy Assante organized a fierce pursuit, but her increasing frustration gave Abner Heath, her Prime Minister, the opportunity to seize control. The Grendel and his young charge fled as far as Africa, meeting Azif A. Barouk, a rebel leader who discovered that this black Grendel was, in fact, a powerful cyborg designed under Orion's orders and programmed to protect the heir. The Grendel and his compatriots battled vampires in Siberia. Ten years of hiding past, during which Jupiter grew into a young man and was joined by his stepsister, Crystal Kennedy, daughter of Laurel Kennedy Assante who had fled her mother with her young lesbien lover, a green-haired Grendel named Susan Veraghen. Abner Heath, unable to unite the fratured globe, attempted to discover how to reactivate Orion's Sun-Disc. Jupiter and his compatriots assaulted Heath and those ruling in his absence, and Grendel-Prime, the cyborg, plugged himself into the Sun-Disc, blasting the Imperial communications satellite and allowing for the global broadcast of a message by the heir. On 7 July 2603, Jupiter Niklos Assante assumed the throne and became Jupiter I, the second Grendel-Khan. His mission done, Grendel-Prime vanished and was rarely seen afterwards.
this shit just sounds FUCKING AWESOME holy fuck. And they also found time to do a Batman vs Grendel series?! I've been missing out!
