Grendel: Behold the Devil

Grendel #14

by Matt Wagner

For years, the life of the original Grendel, Hunter Rose, has been accessible only through his private journal, but there is a secret too terrible for even its pages, and a section of the journal is missing. Behold the Devil follows Rose through this lost period early in his criminal career, as he is under scrutiny not only by the police and media, but also by the prying eyes of an unseen - possibly supernatural pursuer. Unusually shaken and paranoid, the criminal mastermind is forced to take steps that redefine the evil of the entity known as Grendel!

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Crime, Comic Book, Fantasy

184 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Matt Wagner is an American comic book writer and artist. In addition to his creator-owned series' Mage and Grendel, he has also worked on comics featuring The Demon and Batman as well as such titles as Sandman Mystery Theatre and Trinity, a DC Comics limited series featuring Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

From a series of journal entries torn from the diary of Hunter Rose - While monitoring his criminal empire, Grendel feels someone or something stalking him. Can he get to the bottom of things while evading a nosy reporter and an unofficial Grendel Task Force?

I've been an admirer of Matt Wagner for quite a while but never managed to get into Grendel aside from Devil by the Deed and the Batman/Grendel crossover in the 1990s. I found this for cheap at InstockTrades so I figured it was time to start catching up.

Matt Wagner returns to the original incarnation of Grendel after more than a decade. His artwork is stellar, minimalism at its finest. There are no wasted colors and Matt proves there's no need to use all 64,000 colors at your disposal when you can do some amazing things with just black, red, and a couple shades of gray.

The writing is almost as slick as the art. You can't help like Hunter Rose despite him being an amoral criminal. Narrated by Christine Sparr, the second Grendel and daughter of Stacy, Hunter Rose's ward in the future, and by Grendel himself, Behold the Devil sees Grendel taking care of business while trying to catch whatever is tailing him and throwing him off his game. The book is loaded with action, intrigue, and blood.

I wouldn't say it's perfect but Grendel: Behold the Devil is a gorgeous, fun, well-written book. Five out of five sword canes.

[Chad · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great bookend to the legacy of Grendel. This is a lost chapter of Grendel's journal, one that he ripped out after the story's completion. Hunter Rose is haunted by a presence he can feel but can't see or discover. Once he determines its nature, he is taken on a far reaching journey to see his influence to come. I recommend you read the Grendel stories in publication order not chronological order to get the full impact of this story.

Wagner's art in this is fantastic. Clean and tight with a slightly cartoonish look. He maintains the black and white of Grendel's original stories only adding a splash of red where needed.

[Du4 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a GREAT addition to the GRENDEL mythos. I was first skeptical of yet another detour by Wagner into more RED, WHITE & BLACK stories of Hunter Rose. However, unlike those stories, BEHOLD THE DEVIL actually takes us to a new place with Grendel and puts sort of a nice little cap on the entire body of work.

Wagner, as always, stuns with both his amazing black & white (and red) art and his mastery of Hunter Rose's poetic dialogue. I think Hunter's aristocratic, nuanced writing gets better and better the more Wagner writes him. I loved also the Christine Spar excerpts placed at key points in the story, which not only frame the story but also provide welcome background to new readers or those who have been out of touch with GRENDEL for a while.

Ultimately the capper on my adoration of this story is the plot twist at the end. GRENDEL has always been about the surreptitious rise of evil through time (until it reaches a point where the world of the future is so evil that the spirit of Grendel is seen as an agent of salvation). However, those stories always seemed disconnected from the original Hunter Rose stuff, on purpose or not. Wagner fills that final loop in his GRENDEL opus by matching Hunter to a real demon who gives him visions of the future and insight into the legacy his name shall leave centuries later.

I love this idea. It confirms the demonic, spiritual nature of Grendel and that Hunter was merely a vessel to achieve a motif. Hunter, of course, egomaniac that he is, rejects this vision, leading to his burning of the journal entries he'd made of the entire affair (hence, the "lost days" Spar writes about). It really is a fantastic thematic cap on the series.

One of my favorite, understated character arcs in BEHOLD THE DEVIL (and the larger GRENDEL mythos) is that of Larry Stohler, Grendel's personal aide and accounting mastermind. Larry's motivations for allying with Hunter Rose have never been explained. Wagner keeps those motivations still secretive in BEHOLD THE DEVIL, but he adds a bit of indirect characterization to Larry when he has him recover Hunter's burned journal entries. Larry reads these entirely and burns them himself right before the police come for him (after Hunter's death in the continuity). It's implied that he knows everything that's to come, that Grendel's evil will encompass the world. We knew before that Larry killed himself after Hunter's final battle, but BEHOLD THE DEVIL shows us that perhaps Larry - ever faithful yet unfazed servant - killed himself because he knew what was coming. Perhaps he was guilty over the horror that he had unwittingly helped unleash on the world. Regardless, that scene is possibly one of the most well-written and drafted scenes in Wagner's entire comics ouevre.

Dont miss this if you're a GRENDEL fan. It's pure magic. If you're new to GRENDEL, BEHOLD THE DEVIL is still a great story on its own, and it will galvanize you to check out the rest of the series.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Collects the nine issue mini-series (numbered 0 to 8) published by Dark Horse.

Grendel feels himself stalked by an unknown presence. At first he believes this haunting presence to be Argent, but when confronted by Argent Grendel learns otherwise. As Grendel, Hunter Rose is enemy to police and criminal alike. Losing his edge is not an option. Grendel seeks mystic help from an enemy voodoo master to cure what ails him. Matt Wagner launches a stunning all-new miniseries featuring the Devil himself!

The original Grendel returns, written AND illustrated by Matt Wagner for the first time in years. This hefty hardcover collection of 2008's eight-issue miniseries is a great value for the price. (available on amazon for about $15) Consider that each individual issue of the comic book series cost $3.50, and this is a hardcover. Also included is issue #0 (a short prelude to the main story) and a couple of pages that were previously exclusive to MySpace (these pages aren't critical to the story, but they're nice to have).

As for the story itself, it's been designed to read almost like a manga, with plenty of large panels and splash pages. This is some of Wagner's best artwork to date. While it isn't always as detailed as his earlier work, it's a lot more confident. The ending of the story will be a treat for longtime Grendel fans, but new readers might be a little in the dark.

[Blake Adamson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've only read one other Grendel book by Matt Wagner and I kind of felt that the artwork was a bit rushed or too gritty...something along those lines. but this book, with its badass, sexy black-white-&-blood-red artwork that could give Frank Miller a run for his money, it makes me think that Dark Horse came up to Wagner and said, "dude, we know what you can do, given the proper time and motivation. we're giving you that; just crank out a book we both know everyone will love." and crank one out he did. Not only is this story another dimension in the many facets of the Grendel universe I've heard he's concocted, it's also self-contained, allowing new readers not to feel alienated by the overall arching plotlines. and the prose! oh, dear-*@!#$%^^^&*(-__+-gag me with a (*^%#@!@#$%&, the prose! Hunter Rose's carefully crafted, arrogant, skilled journal entries can put even the great Alan Moore's Rorschach to shame (namely its the pacing that sets Hunter above dear Walter Kovacs here). plus, we also see something new: Grendel unnerved. throughout the story, Hunter Rose feels the presence of eyes upon him (Truman Burbank, eat your heart out). it unsettles him, which is different from the Grendel seen before this. all in all, a pretty great read, one I'm glad to own.

[James DeSantis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first story that's one big storyline.

This time we have Grendel feeling something is following him throughout his adventures of murdering people. Then have a detective on the case of Grendel hunting him. We also have a news reporter doing the same. All three of them intertwine, and of course we know this won't have a very happy ending. Brutal, noir style storytelling, with a absolutely sad as hell ending.

[Ill D · Rating 2 out of 5]

Matt Wagner’s Behold the Devil is a study not in contrasts but rather in contradictions. Hunter Rose, erstwhile known as Grendel, is a cold blooded sociopath who delights in the bloodlust of slaughter but, is shown to exhibit delicate care for his adopted niece. He has amassed a vast horde of privately generated wealth placing him squarely within the 1%er echelon of the idle rich yet, spends his days running his alarmingly vast criminal enterprise. He quotes the Belles Lettres of high culture yet spends his days within the damnably low of the criminal underworld. The same anti-hero who would presumably quote Edmund Burke takes part in a world where no matter what good men do, evil actually does triumph.

Right off the bat Grendel is troubled by contradictory characterization and more importantly a non-existent motivation. This villain easily suffers from the Episode 1 problem. Without describing his appearance or role in the story how well can you describe his character? Beyond the cosmetic there disappointingly isn’t much to say. Besides being a heartless sociopath that’s about it.

Contrast this with some other Batman villains within the same universe. The Joker is a maniacally malevolent murderer with a penchant for the comical and the absurd -truly Batman’s Ying to his Yang/personifying Order Vs. DisOrder. Or perhaps, Victor Fries, sharing the same destructive impulses yet driven by the desire to find a cure for his cryogenically frozen wife. Heck, even the Riddler, while silly, is driven by an obsessively compulsive obsession with enigmas, hence his name-sake. This simple thought experiment totally exposes Matt Wagner’s creation as the stupid farce he is.

All these aforementioned characters have a great width of characterization and well constructed motivations. Grendel on the other hand, just like his duo-chromatic sartorial array would suggest, possess an equally simplistic array of characterization and motivation. He’s a bad guy for no other reason that he can, thus merely filling another platonic cast within a typical cape comic. Raison d'être is a total strike-out at every level. Thankfully, the art is far more hit than miss.

While imitating Sin City’s style and coloration, Behold the Devil just veers from completely ripping off of Miller’s magnum opus. Keeping its distance from a story it could never hope to well replicate, Wagner instead opts for a few more tints and tones here and there to demarcate his own original creation. Light blues provide for a greater depth of environment and bright red is utilized to sometimes stunning yet mostly uneven affect. Unlike Miller’s movie in which rouge is sparingly applied to highlight contrasts for effective thematic effect, this fourth color is implemented way too often for it to it to be employed credibly let alone with the power it should command. In either case, when it works well, it works well, when it’s not – it’s excessive.

And its truly excess that is truly the central failure here. With a perfectly edgy appeal and ethos to match, Behold the Devil revels its own savagery which takes over the top to the next level. Illustrating some of the fiercest executions (especially the final two) ever to grace a comic, Grendel (almost) becomes a parody unto itself. Do we really need e.g. to see someone’s head come apart at the slices? The same excesses that made me deplore Kill Bill
, are a malaise running rampant across this wretched excuse for a comic.

Excessive in length. Excessive in violence. And truly excess in excess, Matt Wagner’s Grendel is more a work of masturbation than art.

[Hugo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Finally, after many years, the events missing from Hunter Rose's diaries are brought to light... and wildly underwhelming they prove to be.

A journalist and detective discover Grendel's true identity, and are killed by Grendel.

Korean gangsters try to move in on Grendel's territory, and are killed by Grendel.

Behold, (possibly) the devil Grendel shows Rose his future legacy, and Rose dismisses it entirely.

You may think, so does nothing that happens in this series have any effect or ramification, and you'd be right, it does not. All of this is frustratingly fitting for Rose's character, but as narrative it falls very flat indeed.

And if that devil is supposed to be literally Grendel (Wagner massively hedges his bets at this point), a ridiculous bat-eared, spider-monkey spouting teen-angst profanity, then much of the strength and weight is massively drained across the entire series.

The art's nothing special either, with multiple splash pages and few panels per page; story-wise, this runs far less than the eight issues it takes—easily six, possibly as few as four. Wagner was once a trailblazing stylist, but this could have been drawn by anybody.

[Joshua · Rating 3 out of 5]

I knew about Grendel because I had read Matt Wagner's Mage. I picked up this collection not realizing how little I actually knew about Grendel.
This collection does a lot of good work with characters and visual story telling, but it felt a little disjointed with a lot of hanging plot threads like the little girl and Argent the wolf and the foul-mouthed imp and the heavy hints at something to do with the assistant and especially the psychedelic vision of Grendels past and future (which seemed like such a cool idea I was got explored). Now that I have finished it and found it to catalog here on Goodreads, I realize there in fact are tons of other stories that most likely pick up those threads, and I'm not disappointed and eventually I may get around to reading the rest of it.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. The book's pretty good, but if you've been reading Grendel all along, this particular volume isn't really that enlightening. Good, but I'd like to see Wagner do some other work. Not much left to say with Hunter Rose.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic package and incredible page design/layouts. Wagner is so damn creative. The art is crisp and has a feel that is unique to me. The story is different and very dark.

[jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with most serialized stories this was much easier to follow and, therefore, much more enjoyable to read as a collected edition. Wagner's artwork, as always, is gorgeous, and the way this "missing chapter" is woven into the existing Grendel mythose was seamless. This is how you update and flesh out a character's past without making it feel like a forced retcon.

It's great fun to, again, be part of the classic Grendel storytelling method with Hunter's biography leading the narrative and the real meaning of the story being felt through the ancillary characters. Grendel stories are always the best when its less about Grendel and more about the effect he has on those around him.

That said, the next-to-last chapter is a little bit self-indulgent. I suppose it's a great tip-of-the-hat to fans who have been following Grendel for the past 25 years, but I imagine newer readers might have become a little lost as opposed to sucked into the mystery of Grendel throughout the ages. It was also frustrating that, although alluded to, no Grendel exploits prior to those of Hunter Rose showed up in the hallucination sequence. This series has always been forward-facing with Hunter Rose being the zero-point on the graph. The sequence set the stage for a much deeper history for the character that was, sadly, ignored.

Thankfully the last chapter wrapped things up in a style truly worthy of Hunter Rose. His rejection of the hallucination and brutal containment of lose ends is exactly what the reader is hoping for and expecting. Accordingly, it leaves no room to wonder about the nature of Hunter Rose. He is the living embodiment of ethical egoism... and I'd have it no other way.

Vivat Grendel!

[Rev. Nyarkoleptek · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is without question the stupidest Grendel story I've read to date.

In previous stories, Hunter Rose came across as suave, sophisticated and utterly menacing. In Behold The Devil, the character seems to have been written by a thirteen-year old Grendel fanboy who's just discovered the thesaurus.

This was bad enough to try slogging through, but then Wagner reveals (taa-daa!) the Grendel spirit -- the demonic driving force behind 700 years of epic, sprawling storyline...

...and it's a teeny li'l cussin, spittin', cute-as-a-button Warner Brothers imp.


Oh. Well. That's... cute.


Nicely done, Wagner -- you've managed to bring Grendel down to the level of She-Hulk VS. Peter Porker, Amazing Spider-Ham.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hunter Rose, the master criminal known as Grendel is trying to juggle his personal life, a brewing gang war, a nosey reporter and a stubborn young police woman, when he realizes 'something' is following him around the city.
Like his literary grandfather 'Fantomas' Grendel is an unrepentant villain, throughly amoral and brutal, yet so well written that you can't help but root for him.

Wagner juggles a couple story threads nicely. None drag or feel padded and despite knowing what happens to anyone that crosses Grendel, you like most of the cast and hope they'll survive.

Would love to see someone get the movie rights to this character.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matt Wagner's Grendel, it if wasn't written/drawn so well, would be a guilty pleasure. Hunter Rose is a dark anti-hero/villain that would walk hand in hand with Moriarity, Lecter, Fisk and others of his kind. This is the first story arc I've read that spent a ton of time in his head/journals. You don't necessarily cheer for him, but you become wrapped up. When it comes down to it, he is the anti-Batman. Read that story line back when it came out in the comics, going to have to find it again.

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I did enjoy this work as anything by the master craftsman Matt Wagner tends to be worth while, the pieces that make up the whole are a bit of a jumbled mess. Wagner tries to weave a story using albeit failed experimental comic book effects. Your mileage may vary, but I prefer a straight-up comic book material within my comic book material. I don't want to read 4 paragraphs of prose by "Christina Spar" particularly when it's bad enough Wagner has tons of monologue caption to read (usually pointless and unnecessary) on double page spreads.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

I actually read this as individual issues, but it's great stuff regardless of how you read it. It tells of a couple of weeks that are missing from the Grendel journals that Christine Spar used to write Devil by the Deed. The book is therefore presented as speculation on her part, backed up with police interviews.

A lot of people complain about the supernatural element to this volume, but hey-Grendel's arch-enemy is a werewolf. Deal with it. :P

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Behold the Devil. This is a good Hunter Rose story — what I'd been hoping for throughout the volume. For the first time ever, we get a continuing narrative of Hunter that shows us what his daily life looked like, how he interacted with it, and the dangers that he faced. I could have done without the reveal of the future to bookend the series, but otherwise it's a fun story with at least one surprising twist [7/10].

[Trey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent enough. I do want to check out some of the older stuff though.

[Sean Chick · Rating 4 out of 5]

It would have been better if I had not read this first but all the same I quite enjoyed it.