Grendel: Devil’s Odyssey
It was only a matter of time after completing the “Mage” trilogy. Matt Wagner has now returned to his other defining series, “Grendel.” What started off as a story of how evil and madness perpetuate through blood and generations evolved into a story of how the representation of these ideas came to dominate mankind in the future. A future whose time has now run out. “Devil’s Odyssey” is ostensibly the story of what happens when the Grendel ideology of conquest through force takes to the stars. The results are generally alright, except for one encounter that gets our most modern villain in a way that other fictional attempts simply haven’t.
In case you’re new to this era of “Grendel,” the main character here is Grendel Prime. He’s a cyborg who is the most skilled and capable warrior on Earth, and fiercely loyal to the Khan, the supreme leader of the Grendel Clans. The story starts off with the stronghold of the current Khan, Juno II, under siege and facing annihilation. She has summoned Grendel Prime for one final mission: To pilot a ship off-planet and establish a new home for humanity with the genetic information contained within it. Prime agrees and leaves Earth on the ship with only a drone named Sigma Seven, or “Siggy” as she likes to be called, for company.
Wagner states in his introduction that this story of a lone warrior on a quest is essentially an extended homage to the stories he read as a kid in the pages of “Heavy Metal.” I can understand the sentiment, but the results leave something to be desired. The planets Prime and Siggy visit all follow a fairly standard formula which involves the former encountering a new civilization, learning about its customs, getting into trouble with the locals, causing some death and/or destruction to get out of said trouble, and leaving the place worse than how it was found.
It’s this inherent predictability which undermines any enjoyment you’d hope to get from the stories being told here. There’s nothing wrong with how they’re being told, and I do like how Wagner ties all this together in the final story to show how Prime, for all of his strengths, was the worst person that could’ve been chosen for this job. Wagner also has fun drawing all of the different civilizations as there’s a distinctness to all of them and a reasonable variety to his protagonist’s methods of attack. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to make up for the fact that you’ll likely guess how each one of these encounters is going to end when Prime touches down on a planet.
That’s still true of the most interesting story here, though this turns out to be the exception that proves the rule. The story in question has Prime touching down on a planet whose civilization has advanced to the equivalent of the Bronze Age and whose inhabitants settle all of their disputes via trial-by-combat… to the death! Our protagonist finds this judicial system absurd and goes about trying to change it with the individual he saved from the first trial he encountered at his side. With his advanced technological makeup, Prime is able to survive any trial he encounters, and this causes him to be known throughout the land as the White Warrior after the robe he wears while traveling. This eventually leads him to the civilization’s leader, Gama Gorach. By having Gama fail to defeat him in combat, our protagonist believes that he can convince this individual to abolish the practice of trial-by-combat.
All we know about Gama Gorach before we see him, though, is that he’s the leader of this civilization, and that no one has ever beaten him in combat. Which would make him kind of a big deal. Then, after Prime is chained and taken into the arena, we finally see this leader: A short, squat, overweight, bug-eyed creature with a head of wavy blue hair. It may not be clear from these individual adjectives, but one look at this thing on the page and it’s clear: This is Trump.
If the appearance doesn’t convince you, then it’ll become very obvious once Gama opens his mouth. “He’s an enemy of the people!” “It’s fake words!” “Gama has all the best moves!” “Very low energy!” His dialogue is either lightly paraphrased from things our former president has actually said, or sounds very much like it. Still, he’s just a loudmouth with a metal sword. What chance does he have against a cyborg killing machine?
Well, here’s where “Devil’s Odyssey” succeeds in ways that other Trump analogues I’ve read about in comics have not. After Gama realizes that he can’t hurt this guy with his sword, he continues to hype up the crowd in the arena with his rhetoric before wheeling out the sole follower Prime has had on his journey. This follower is now wearing a white robe, and you can probably see where this is going.
It’s that ability to freely play with the truth to his own ends, and the cleverness that allows him to do so in the first place. While the buffoonery is easy to come by, it’s this willingness to acknowledge the clownish and smart ways that Trump is able to manipulate his audience that Wagner gets absolutely right. As for how Prime deals with this? He does it in exactly the way you’d expect, with satisfaction ringing as hollow as you’d expect. There’s probably a message about Trump’s opposition somewhere in here as well.
For me, at least, that was the most distinctive part of “Devil’s Odyssey.” It was a bunch of fairly standard sci-fi action stories with one that managed to capture the zeitgeist. I’ll remember Gama Gorach long after the story about the multi-legged aliens who live on a desert planet has faded into memory. This ultimately makes the story one that will really only appeal to those already familiar with Prime’s story, or the “Grendel” mythos as a whole. Even then it’s kind of questionable as to whether or not they’ll be willing to come back for the three-part “Devil’s Crucible” storyline advertised on the last page of this collection.