Quick Rating: Classic
Title: Devil’s Disclosure

Writer: Matt Wagner
Artist: Jay Geldhof
Color: Jeromy Cox
Letters: Bob Pinaha
Cover: John K. Snyder III
Asst. Editor: Shawna Ervin-Gore
Editor: Diana Schutz

Let’s face it, most comics are vapid and banal. They are self-referential to the point of unintelligibility. Gertrude Stein pointed out that “[t]he trouble with Oakland is that when you get there, there isn’t any there there.” The same could be said about virtually every comic book produced by the two major publishing houses. On the other hand, Stein was an intellectual prig so maybe you should go ahead and visit Oakland. It’s bound to be more enjoyable than spending an afternoon reading the last decade’s worth of Elseworlds. At some point, your mind just slips away, like poor Malcolm McDowell in Clockwork Orange. The stories are handed out in monthly chapters, moving at a pace surpassed by the average snail. Events are drawn out until the penultimate chapter when all action comes crashing in on the protagonists like an episode of Star Trek desperately seeking resolution in the final five minutes. Then, as if a commercial break has come and gone, the final chapter of the comic storyline appears thirty days later, showing what we’ve learned and preparing our heroes for the coming adventure. And yet that next adventure will have the exact same characters experiencing the exact same pacing.

Onto this desert of mediocrity strides Grendel and no one cares. Everyone prefers their corporate-sponsored oasis where the water is badly drawn and no one thinks for himself or herself. As with so many things, we get the comics that we deserve.

Grendel: God and the Devil #9 (Dark Horse) is a reprint of Grendel #32 (Comico), now more than ten years in the past. The entire God and the Devil miniseries is a reprint of a run from that original Grendel series. It has been re-colored and fronted with a snappy new cover by John K. Snyder III.

Grendel is a true anti-hero. He accomplishes heroic ends through non-heroic means. Essentially, the various Grendel comics trace the passing of the Grendel mantle through time, leaping across generations on occasion. In each age, the populace interprets the character of Grendel differently, funneling that understanding through one focal point.

In this issue, the current Grendel prepares for his final battle against the forces of evil (or good, depending on your perspective), personified by a Pope and his church, based in a Denver of the far future. Also, the Pope’s enforcer has become a vampire and is beginning to turn everyone he can into a vampire. The artwork, in two competing styles on almost every page, comments on itself, building wonderful images from within. Each panel is alive with action and thought. The story, dogmatic perhaps, has power and deserves to be told. And it feels as though Matt Wagner would have told this story whether or not he was getting paid for it.

December, 2003