Colors by “Grendel” creator, writer and artist Matt Wagner. This was the original artwork for the “Devil’s Legacy” storyline first published by Comico; Wagner completed the cover art for Dark Horse Comics’s reprints in 2000.
Tag Archives: Matt Wagner
Panel from Matt Wagner’s “Batman/Grendel: Devil’s Masque,” 1993
Cover to “Grendel: Devil’s Legacy” #10, Matt Wagner
2000.
Cover to “Grendel: Devil’s Legacy” #5, Matt Wagner, 2000
This is the cover for Dark Horse Comics’ millennial reprint, and not Comico’s original release of the series in the late 1980’s.
Cover to “Grendel: Devil’s Legacy” #2 (2001)
This is Matt Wagner’s cover for the Dark Horse Comics re-release of the series in 2001 — not its first publication by Comico in 1987.
I know this is a silly observation (and almost certainly unintended by Wagner), but this absolutely reminds me of the Green Lantern Corps comics. (Consider the color scheme combined with the placement of the circles, and even Christine Spar’s pose.)
Cover to “Grendel: Devil’s Legacy” #1, by Matt Wagner, 2000
This cover would be a reprint for an issue from the original series in the late 1980’s.
Cover and interior page for Matt Wagner’s “Grendel: Devil Child,” 1999
Cover by “Grendel” creator Matt Wagner.
Interior art by Tim Sale, with colors by Teddy Kristiansen. The story was written by Diana Schutz.
Cover to “Silverback” #1, Matt Wagner, 1989
“These are a few of my favorite things.”
I am now the proud owner of … a goodly portion of all the “Grendel” comics Matt Wagner ever wrote. What you see in the top row are “Grendel Omnibus” Volumes 1, 2 and 3. (I believe I actually shared my review of Volume 1 on this site a while ago.) These would comprise a nearly inclusive history of Hunter Rose, Christine Spar, Brian Li Sung, Orion Assante and Eppy Thatcher. All that remains for me to collect is the fourth Omnibus trade-paperback, chronicling the possibly immortal Grendel Prime and his imperiled charge, Jupiter Assante.
The Omnibus editions do not include crossovers with heroes such as Batman and The Shadow, as those characters are obviously owned by other companies. Nor do they include the diverse dystopian future tales depicted by various artists in the 1990’s “Grendel Tales.” But I am in heaven with what you see below — or maybe hell, considering these books’ central motif.
To top it all off, that hefty tome beneath the comics is W. H. Auden’s “Collected Poems,” edited by Edward Mendelson, with the poet’s work between 1927 and his death in 1973. It’s 927 pages. It weighs 30 pounds, probably. And it is indexed by both the poem’s titles and their first lines. That is what you call a lifetime investment.
The comics will be excellent summer reading; as will Auden. But I’ll focus more on the Briton when fall arrives. Like his countryman, Doyle, he might be best enjoyed outdoors on a gray and increasingly brisk Autumn day.
I need to buy books more often.
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.”
Today is the Ides of March.
I suppose that Marc Antony’s speech from “Julius Caesar,” below, is the Western World’s definitive treatise on sarcasm?
I haven’t read it in its entirety since 10th grade English at Longwood High School. In doing so now, I’m surprised at how many pop cultural references to it spring to mind:
- The entire speech is beautifully riffed by the eponymous blade-wielding arch-villain in Matt Wagner’s incredible “Grendel: Devil by the Deed” (1993) as follows: “Friends, Romans, city folk — listen to me or I’ll lop off off your ears. Let’s bury your Caesar and then let’s appraise him.”
- I’m guessing that Charles Bronson’s “The Evil That Men Do” (1984) is a reference to the third line?
- In at least one episode of “The X Files” in the 1990’s, the Well-Manicured Man angrily refers to the traitorous Syndicate as “these honorable men.”
- In one of his later novels (2002’s “The Bear and the Dragon,” maybe?) Tom Clancy describes a pregnant Chinese factory worker as being “made of sterner stuff.” (I can’t remember which book, but for some strange reason I can remember that line. Weird.)
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
— from William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 