From: rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu (Michael Rawdon)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc
Subject: Re: Grendel -Warchild
Date: 14 Oct 92 00:54:34 GMT
Reply-To: rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu
Organization: University of Wisconsin Computer Sciences Dept., Madison, WI

In <1992Oct13.234229.12253@athena.cs.uga.edu> jordan@castor (USENET's Chuck) writes:
>I am certain you are the only person to have read this series and dislike
>it.  I think it's really good.  Yes, it has been slow-moving so far,
>especially compared to the early storylines in the Grendel ongoing series.
>I think the homage to Lone Wolf and Cub is interesting, so maybe War CHild
>loses something if you're not a fan of LW&C.  (I hate doing that.  Acronyms.)

It may lose something (I could never get into Lone Wolf And Cub), but I still
think that it's great. :-)

>Also, it probably has more impact if you're familiar with the later story-
>lines in Grendel, about Orion Assante.  (I haven't read those yet, so I'm
>just guessing here.)

It has somewhat more impact, though not *that* much more.  I suspect that
it will become more relevant as we move further into the series.

>I'm just now buying up all the Grendel back-issues I can, so I can't give
>you a definitive recommendation, but the good recommendations you've heard
>about the book are probably about the Comico series, especially the first
>few story arcs.  My personal favorites are 16-19, which were all written
>and drawn by Matt Wagner, and I think are completely brilliant.
>					      	     ^^^^^^^^^	

Hmm... I thought those issues were by far the worst of the series.  I mean...
the Polk story was okay, but nothing outstanding.  And the other one was
really lame; nothing in it grabbed me at all.  I thought those four issues
were an unfortunate interruption in an otherwise fascinating development of
the storyline and future history.

My favorite is probably the final storyline, the Orion Assante one.  Though
in a sense it had the most "un-Grendel-like" feel to it (if there is such a
thing! :-)

>I think the current series is pretty good.  It's interesting that Wagner
>could take a character who I imagine was first conceived in only one
>incarnation -- Hunter Rose -- and stretch it out as an abstract spirit of
>evil and vengeance that has existed over centuries.

Grendel is more, as Wagner himself has said, a spirit of aggression.
Sometimes it's aggression for a good cause, sometimes for bad.  More often
for both.  (You can probably pick this duality apart easiest in the Christine
Spar and Orion Assante issues, and it's probably muddiest in the Eppy Thatcher
incarnation.)

>I also like the Comico Grendel series because of its format -- a series of
>limited series, each one done by a different art team.  (Although I would've
>been happier if Wagner had done the art for all of them.)

I dunno; I really liked the varying artists.  Wagner is a very good artist,
but I think his style would have been out-of-place in, say, the Thatcher
storyline.  I think he's more versatile as a writer than as an artist.

-- 
Michael Rawdon				 rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu
University of Wisconsin Computer Sciences Department, Madison, WI

"A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't
 even know existed can render your own computer unusable."
			- Leslie Lamport, as quoted in CACM, June 1992