Is Grendel the coolest motherfricker in comics history?
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Is Grendel the coolest motherfricker in comics history?
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I wish early Grendel was better, but its clearly the product of a kid who didn't have the modern world to beat the cringe out of him.
Grendel could be cool, but Hunter Rose feels entirely like a try-hard character and the story is handled awkwardly. 80's indie writers also had a weird obsession with sticking Native American characters in everything.
If Grendel was a 2000's Newgrounds/DA character you'd probably see people talk about it nostalgically all the time here.
I liked Grendel when he was a hitman and not some Mary-sue crimelord.
Also everything after Hunter Rose was trash.
why do people think this is good? Grendel is pure cringe and I'm glad Netflix cancelled the show
>80's indie writers also had a weird obsession with sticking Native American characters in everything.
Probably a reaction against the depiction of Indigenous Americans in so many Westerns as easily-tricked savages at worst, and mono-syllabic sidekicks at best. Not that the whole "tHeY'rE sO sPiRiTuAl AnD wIsE!!!" shtick of the 80s and 90s in American media was much better in retrospect... but at least they tried, y'know?
>80's indie writers also had a weird obsession with sticking Native American characters in everything.
It's fetishistic, like Dani Moonstar in X-men. Also this generation of Boomer grew up and watched Brando send an Indian man to do his oscar speech for him, and they grew up watching the crying indian commercial propaganda before their saturday morning cartoon programming. The indie autists always felt a need to copy what they see on TV so create their own oppressed red man native character. It was a cringe trend.
I guess Wagner can be given credit as the godfather of pseud-created edgelord incel webcomics that spammed the internet 10 years later, but that's not a good thing.
>watched Brando send an Indian man to do his oscar speech for him
OK zoomer.
Oh man, I avoided this comic because I heard it was good. I didn't know it was cringe. I would have read it way earlier if I knew.
Its fricking insane.
As someone who got into comics around 2005, Grendel was always recommended as must-read material, "a study in aggression" or something pretentious like that
The covers were beautifully rendered by Wagner for all the archive stuff, so naturally you think this brilliance came fully formed, but no.
Its hard to tell because its a typical 80's indie "jump from publisher to publisher" deal from what I can tell, but the original issues had a storyline that were never actually completed in comic form, just turned into a long winded finale done in an illustrative style. The strangest thing in all this is that while Wagner draws like a weeb teenager(or maybe someone really into Vaugn Bode), his composition is 10/10. So you have these beautiful art deco frames and clever composition while a poorly drawn proto-DA OC is telling you how twisted and badass he is.
I don't think this series has the same rep it used to, and the later series go so off the rails from what the premise is I can't imagine a lot of crossover exists from readers interested in the initial idea of a pulp gentleman thief/assassin
This is DOS game cover art character design bad.
Hunter Rose(aka Eddie) is a child prodigy who learns to fence at age 14 and gets a totally hot older woman to frick him who tragically dies of being too fricking hot.
Also there's creeping pedos everywhere. Like you can't walk 3 feet without creeping pedophiles. Its actually kinda amusing how Eddie specifies being disgusted by pedos but also talks about Jocasta being the love of his life for fricking him at 14.
By the way, this is all suppossed to take place in like the 30's.
>kinda amusing how Eddie specifies being disgusted by pedos but also talks about Jocasta being the love of his life for fricking him at 14
erm because chicks with nice breasts are hot but men creeping on older girls isn't? what yo call double standards, i call them the facts of life, brother.
while true, its sating the quiet part out loud.
Pedo subtext in the story was always the most interesting part of Hunter Rose to me but it was never explored and I'm not sure how much of it was ever even intentional either.
This is weid.
But oddly interesting.
I heard he did the first Grendel stuff when he was 16. Not sure if true but it would make a lot of sense. The fact that he stuck with this idea for his entire life makes it even more interesting. Never seen someone so dedicated to their High School notebook doodles.
He was 21 when Grendel was first published at least
Damn that's much more embarrassing.
It really is. He also did Mage in his later 20s and its not much better
The American indie scene really feels like a joke sometimes. You get sold on these classic indie comics and most of it is just "you had to be there".
I'm not familiar enough with foreign indie to compare but most of them tend to waver between experimental or interesting but horribly flawed concept or absolute masterpiece with very little in between until recently when everything started turning into bland TV pitches.
Euro indie tends towards experimental but most of it is takes on genres we don't really have in the US, not any more at least.
>The American indie scene really feels like a joke sometimes.
What else have you looked into?
R. Crumbs work, American Splendor are two others that come to mind. I get why they're GOOD and recognized, but a lot are underwhelming. Chester Brown and Chris Ware's work come to mind as well
I'm not really saying American indie comics are all bad, a lot of it is just how indulgent these comic creators come across. There's a much narrower selection between navel gazing comics tryign to be high art, and just brain dead pulp cape-without capes comics that a publisher like Dynamite or 90's Image does.
I think it's desperation.
Anything but capes.
I understand that motivation. When you have an entire medium dominated by a single genre it makes anything semi-competent that's not that seem fresh and exciting even if it's a story you wouldn't look at twice if it was a book or movie.
I dunno man, sure it's amateurish but there's a charm to it.
OP here, I actually love the simplistic art, gives it an organic feel of some kind
Rough nature of black and white boom comics is the whole appeal, things like The Crow or TMNT won't be as popular if they where just jobber looking mainstream books.
I think thats part of the reason manga is so popular; there's an attainability to the art that engages kids.
Back in the 60's DC wondered why Marvel was outselling them when Kirby's art looked primitive to them, and they suggested it was because the more raw Kirby art felt more relatable.
I think about this alot. Like any teenager can do a stripped down anime art style, but what kid can get close to clay Mann?
Since you said jobber you're probably familiar with how they said they were drawn tot he image guys because the art style seemed imitable, not clinical, super technical art.
>I think thats part of the reason manga is so popular; there's an attainability to the art that engages kids.
Manga generally requires you to be highly skilled with knowledge of anatomy and perspective (though of course there are cartoony manga).
What you are talking about is Dogman and Dav Pilkey comics. Dav Pilkey is outselling capeshit singlehanded because his comics are fun for kids to read and drawn in an attainable and relatable style that makes every kid think "I can draw comics like that too, if Pilkey can do it for a job, so can I!"
Western capeshit is the opposite. Words words words, woke political agendas and decompressed storytelling.
He fought Batman and The Shadow without getting caught or killed which is impressive.
>You get sold on these classic indie comics and most of it is just "you had to be there".
Sometimes it is, and guess what? The kids are going to be saying the same shit about the stuff you love too, but I doubt you've actually read the Comico series. I also don't know why this thread is turdpicking Wagner from his earliest published works and has a weird hate boner for Argent and forgetting that vampires and magic also exist in the Grendelverse but Cinemaphile is gonna Cinemaphile
>The kids are going to be saying the same shit about the stuff you love too,
Sure, I welcome that, hell a lot of the stuff I like is old anyway. We should challenge idols, not outright shit on them, but reevaluation is good. The young should call the old out on things dating,and the old should explain its place.
>but I doubt you've actually read the Comico series.
I have, nearly 20 years ago now. Again this isn't some ultra niche series, this is something that was getting republished 20 years a go and appearing on a lot of best-of lists. Comic readers on Cinemaphile tend to skew older , there's a lot of us who did start at the beginning through reprints.
>I also don't know why this thread is turdpicking Wagner from his earliest published works and has a weird hate boner for Argent and forgetting that vampires and magic also exist in the Grendelverse but Cinemaphile is gonna Cinemaphile
Sure, but the thing is the Hunter Rose era is what draws most people in, and the premise is basically a gentleman thief/rogue like Lupin on the offset.Argent feels like an overcomplication, and despite being a period piece early grendel really feels nothing like that. Characters look and dress like people from the 80's, and talk like it too. Of course there's gonna be some whiplash from seeing the modern covers and then actually reading it.
Outright trolling comics threads is shit, sure, but what's worse is when actual longterm fans get pissy about it and act all passive aggressive. calling it DA art is obviously trolling, sure, but people are making legit comments about their reactions to it.
Nah the loudest homosexual ITT is clearly the East vs West zoomer imagining this is offensively bad rather than the early drawings of a guy who was vastly improved by the time he was doing Trinity, Batman/Grendel or Legends of the Dark Knight.
The early art isn't even bad, it's just rough and bit off and cartoony but the actual cartooning and paneling is great better than most mangaka at that age lmfao.
>despite being a period piece early grendel really feels nothing like that. Characters look and dress like people from the 80's, and talk like it too.
Isn't Grendel set in the 80s, the same time it was written? What period was it supposed to be? Am I going crazy?
Dates are never stated but it clearly is.
Like the original comico shit? Because I'm looking at one of those with Grendel talking to argent on an 80s looking phone. And the later Hunter stories are outright in the 80s.
how do Grendel fans cope now that the truth about their DA tier weebshit comic is exposed to the world?
Like even with weird newspaper artstyle this unironically great cartooning, the sense of movement, the page layout, like it's good stuff.
Wagner is interesting to me because he was a much better composition designer than artist early on, and very often its the opposite. Even now the vast majority of new artists I see online learned to render-max without knowing composition beyond basic photography.
He drew it when he was 21, his art and writing gets better over time.
my personal favorite version of Matt Wagner style is Batman crossover era because it's perfect mix of serious and cartoony.
why did they let this cringelord draw Batman? Whose dick was he sucking at DC to get this gig? Wagner must have been bros with everyone important on the con scene to get as big as he did.
>Its fricking insane.
>As someone who got into comics around 2005, Grendel was always recommended as must-read material, "a study in aggression" or something pretentious like that
holy shit. I'm like you. For the longest time I have heard this shit recommended as good and "an indie classic" and that Wagner was one of the all time great indie artists. I didn't know Grendel was the capeshit version of the Room and people only read it to laugh at the cringe. I really thought for the longest time that Grendel was an actual good comic on par with Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns. The covers always looked boring so I never bothered to read inside.
>I don't think this series has the same rep it used to, and the later series go so off the rails from what the premise is I can't imagine a lot of crossover exists from readers interested in the initial idea of a pulp gentleman thief/assassin
boomers must have overhyped it because they were impressed he managed to publish something without DC and Marvel's help. They were so desperate for independent comics they read amateur shit like Grendel and propped it up as high art.
Yeah it's a lot like spawn where a large portion of the run is now weird spinoff shit not canon to the original
It was good
It's considered good because Boomers couldn't properly peg it as the proto edgelord cringe it was, and just thought it was novel and unique.
Now it's clear to see as run of the mill incel fantasy shit.
I only know about the character because of the Batman crossovers.
So when does Grendel become a cyborg?
Volume 4, we don't talk about the volumes other than Hunter Rose
Man I wish I picked this edition up for cheap when I had the chance, it was on sale in a regular-ass bookstore for some reason, maybe someone unearthed it from some warehouse and didn't know what it was.
The Dark Horse version is drastically recolored
I own that version, softcover with blue cover the original 80's coloring, it's been colored 3 times, recolor in the 90's and this.
which own that too in big collection.
He got btfo by a nude Beowulf
He's so fricking fly, Jesus Christ.
I fear the Netflix show won't do it justice.
>Netfix
Uh oh spaghetti-os
Anon..they filmed it and then cancelled it.
How could the show have possibly been worse than the comics?
I'm glad the show got cancelled.
Why is this allowed
I looked up his wiki-this no talent clown Wagner was being nominated for Eisners every year when he was pumping this trash out. Seriously boomers, can someone explain why and how a lolcow like Wagner was allowed to rise this high for so long?
this is just lazy and a shitty way to show a fight scene. Seriously-who was praising this trash? How did Matt Wagner become known as an indie comics genius if this was the art he made?
It's actually not a comic but a picture novel moron.
>a picture novel
that's just a cope by an artist too lazy to draw an actual comic
Yes, for sure.
This is just begging for a what I read, what I expected, and what I got. Because I sure as hell wasn't expecting Grendel to look like this.
I don't get why he just never redrew it. Because lord knows it could use a redraw.
Its funny how people always hate onAmerican comics for the cover looking different, but what about when the artist is the same but the style is different?
He's putting out a redraw of Devil by the Deed next year
He kinda redid it with Behold The Devil but still kinda it own story doesn't share the ending.
This was actually my first Grendel comic and it's far better introduction.
How did Matt Wagner get away with the charade for so long? They actually nominated him for Eisner awards for several years.
i've seen it every so often for years, every time i checked it out, i was disappointed by what i saw. it's not compelling
Oh dear, it appears that a casual seems to think that going "Did you know that a celebrated creator-owned comic from the 80s started out looking WEIRD?" is some hitherto unknown revelation.
Like, no shit 80s indie comix started out rough - it's what makes seeing an artist or writer progress so much more satisfying. Frick, go read Ms. Tree or Nexus or Grimjack or even ElfQuest. Honestly, I'd rather people tried to reach for the stars than play it safe.
why was this garbage celebrated though? Why were prominent people in comics celebrating this trash and giving it Eisners? The writing isn't good either.
Gee, it's almost like Wagner upped his game and got better. (You) know this already, but getting attention for contentious bullshit is more your speed
this is trash art too anon
You’re fricking seething kid. And yes, it’s obvious you’re one manga reading anon who’s irrationally mad.
ok Boomer
>you’re right I am one person seething like a fricking baby
Boo hoo homosexual.
I didn’t.
Why did you copy the guy pointing out how weird the digital colorization is
I think a lot of people like the ideas. I mean that's part of why I like it. Wagner did become very good eventually, his Batman and Sandman stuff is good and so is the later Hunter Rose stuff and I think that leads to people being very forgiving of his early garbage. It's kind of inspiring seeing someone go from Deviantart bullshit to making actually good shit.
ngl, seeing all the casuals spamming their "Wagner just made crappy incel bullshit that totes didn't deserve to win any Eisners" just makes me really want to read Grendel now.
Don't bother, it's just casuals pretending to know things
The art in ElfQuest even issue #1 was always better than the best of Grendel. I would not be surprised if you are Matt Wagner trying to defend yourself. Did you post this page because you think it's good?
Ignoring the art, most people I've heard celebrate it act as if Grendel is some sort of character study or deconstruction of an aristocrat made vigilante. But when I read it, it didn't give me the impression that Grendel was supposed to be a character who challenged the expectations of a hero or poked holes in the idea of a caped crusader or anything like that. The character is self righteous and arrogant but his ideology is never challenged on a way that properly questions it's validity. The world around him calls for the kind of edginess he provides and validates it. And even the later stories that depict Grendel as more of a malevolent force than a character still act like it's the cure to whatever illness is inhabiting the setting.
I always see it described as a "study in aggression" which to be honest I never understood the frick that meant, I don't see how it explores aggression anymore than any other supervillain story. It read more like a study in pedophilia but that was mostly by accident I think.
That kind of goes with what I mean too.
Grendel may have been ruthless and self serving, but the setting made sure to prop him up by having his point of reference be a city of pedos. Essentially making him seem like the reasonable choice as the lesser of two evils. It doesn't feel like a cautionary tale because of that, he just seems like a reasonable product of his environment.
I'm not sure I agree with that, maybe because the Grendel I'm mostly thinking of is the new Hunter Rose shit where he is a totally evil crime boss and is shown to be totally evil and possessed by a demon. I always read his relationship with Stacy as a kind of grooming anyway and that Hunter himself was implied to be a pedophile in denial, especially after that story Wagner and Tim Sale did about her.
I kinda liked Native American characters in media... The original Turok was cool, Spirit was one of my favorite GI Joes and Tommy from the original Prey was a badass.
Imagine being so lame you hate something as classic as Grendel just to get (you) and imagine hating the clean line Alex Toth inspired art Matt Wagner has. I always thought Wagner work was great even as a child seeing his Batman covers. This board has no taste in art.
It's not a good time to be a Grendel fan.
Why, there's a new book coming out and the threat of a Netflix series was stopped.
>a Netflix series was stopped.
that was Grendel's only hope.
No, Netflix adaptations are always awful. Are you moronic?
No, that was a danger we narrowly avoided. I don't want Netflix to keep ruining all of media.
did boomers really?
Really really
All complaints aside, I don't see how this is any more unusual than you frickers latching on to shit like Homestuck and RWBY that was also dated and cringe as frick as soon as it came out.
Quality indie stuff is so few and far between people are overly defensive of old sacred cows.
Like cry about people bringing up manga all you want, but there's enough of it that you can take a wonky old 60's/70's manage and appreciate it in spite of the faults, while also acknowledging whats good about it. Manga fans do a better job of explaining why someone like Go Nagai is worth respecting, while indie comic fans just go "he was based because it wasn't jobber superhero comics!" Like everything in US comics revolves around superhero comics, even something that isn't. Saying crudeness is part of the charm means nothing to a new reader in 2022.
I doubt most of current Cinemaphile remembers what the availability of indies was like 20 years ago. It was shit and very inconsistent. I think the concession at the time was that it wasn't going to be amazing all around because one man is seldom good at everything, but you were guaranteed something you hadn't seen before. The bar has raised in recent years and webcomic tier stories and art don't cut it. I also think the appreciation for single author comics has waned as they became more popular.
I don't know, whatever the problem is doesn't even register as a problem.
I think it's the case that the few indie comic that are good are so good or highly ambitious, that people put all of indie comics on a pedestal. At the same time, the indie section arguably contains some of the worst shit you'll ever see/read in the medium.
>Mangagays knowing who Go Nagai is
Part of Go Nagai's charm is the crudeness of his art and writing.
why are boom booms getting so defensive when we clown on Grendel comics? Not even Netflix could handle how gay he is
2/10, you're trying too hard
>boom booms
You mean xoom xooms