A review by nigellicus
Grendel Omnibus, Vol. 2: The Legacy by Diana Schutz, Bernie Mireault, Matt Wagner
5.0
In the Grendel Cycle, the spirit of Grendel is the spirit of violence, passing down through generations, spoiling and corrupting everything around it. In the case of Stacy Palumbo. Grendel's adopted daughter, there is no escape from horror and trauma in her life after Grendel, and the opening story in this collection is profoundly horrible, graphic and disturbing, featuring rape and abuse and severe mental breakdown. it's a stark, brutal nasty story, far from the sleek, smooth, sinister and seductive design of Devil By The Deed, utterly stripping the entire concept of Grendel of any hint or shred of romanticisation. With that nasty bitter taste in the reader's mind, it's onwards chronologically though backwards in print order to Devil's Legacy, and Christine Spar, Stacy's daughter, who goes from chronicling to embracing the Grendel legacy in her efforts to first recover and then avenge the son stolen from her by a monstrous vampire. Despite her good intentions, Grendel takes over her life and the lives of those around her, drawing the fatal attention of Hunter Rose's nemesis, Argent.
The Devil Inside is a bleak tale of urban alienation and obsession, as Christine's lover descends into a hellish world of hostility and sleaze, battling with tangled, jagged emotions he tries to channel into a misguided and self-destructive effort at revenge.
Devil Tales revisits the heyday of Hunter Rose once more, albeit from the point of view of characters almost too minor to be noticed by him. A cop stumbles on a tangled and complex family conspiracy in a claustrophobic noirish tale of tiny panels and small print that reads like a classic piece of detective fiction. The story of Tommy Nuncio, a stoolie who hears something he shouldn't - or does he? And ends up in a state of almost existential terror and dread, is another kind of classic crime fiction, as the walls slowly close in around a hapless small-fry caught up in something way bigger than him.
The Devil Inside is a bleak tale of urban alienation and obsession, as Christine's lover descends into a hellish world of hostility and sleaze, battling with tangled, jagged emotions he tries to channel into a misguided and self-destructive effort at revenge.
Devil Tales revisits the heyday of Hunter Rose once more, albeit from the point of view of characters almost too minor to be noticed by him. A cop stumbles on a tangled and complex family conspiracy in a claustrophobic noirish tale of tiny panels and small print that reads like a classic piece of detective fiction. The story of Tommy Nuncio, a stoolie who hears something he shouldn't - or does he? And ends up in a state of almost existential terror and dread, is another kind of classic crime fiction, as the walls slowly close in around a hapless small-fry caught up in something way bigger than him.