In re-reading the Grendel series as Dark Horse recolors and re-releases it, I've noticed two things: One is that I don't remember a lot of what I read the first time around, and the second is that there's a lot more world-building going on in the pages of Grendel than I remembered. Wagner's stories, particularly the ones in God and The Devil and Devil's Reign, are less the crime/psychological horror of the first couple arcs and more a larger science-fiction tale with apocalyptic overtones. Some of it seems remarkably prescient, such as the integration of corporate and government structures to such a point that you can't tell them apart, and some of it seems unlikely but interesting speculation, such as the collapse of Christianity. Wagner's story is to some degree the story of Orion Assante, the social outcast who would reshape the world, but it is also a science-fiction tale of a vampire plague, a disintegrated nation coming back together and some sharp and morally ambiguous political machinations.
That's one of the things I really enjoy about Grendel, that Wagner has never really shied away from showing any of his characters as flawed. Those who have read War Child know already that Orion Assante's new world order doesn't necessarily work out for the best, and even if it had, it's hard not to view Orion and Sherri as the bad guys of the piece in some respect. They drive the nation into paranoia and war in the name of their greater goals, and while this was written in the late '80s, it's even more relevant to today's political climate. Sure, they're dealing with problems of an immense nature, like the collapse of age-old social structures and a plague of bloodsucking monsters, but their manipulation of the masses is more than a little unsettling, even as it's fascinating.
Like the zero issue of God and the Devil, the first issue of Devil's Reign is almost more of an illustrated primer than a comic book per se. Wagner packs a lot of information into blocks of text and Sale's visuals are flashes of information, whether it's a glimpse of the Orion's Sword infomercials or snapshots of battles both military and political. It's not a style that would work for an entire series, but it's a great introduction to the series, and there's something darkly humorous about the informational warnings on how to deal with vampires.
While the first half of the issue is given over to this information overload, the second half is a tale of vampires in Vegas, a vignette that backfills information from a different point-of-view. Even with Grendel Tales to help fill in, I was struck in reading Devil's Reign #1 just how much more potential there is to explore Wagner's Grendel saga in various eras, and how much I'd like to see more down the road. This second story is also a full-on comic with surprisingly vivid colors from Matt Hollingsworth, a brutally violent story of vampires invading a human sanctuary that, while not as accomplished as Sale's modern work, is beautifully rendered and really gets across the eruption of violence and the creepy feelings of the story.
Devil's Reign starts strong, presenting a world that is as dark as the one we saw in God and the Devil but in a very different way, and I'm actually kind of happy that I don't remember enough of the story to know exactly where it's going. Wagner's story has grown considerably by this point from being about a master criminal or a vengeful mother, and while I enjoyed those early characters, I have to say that Wagner's penchant for world-building and dark futurism is one of the more attractive aspects of Grendel.
