“Somewhere in the latter part of the twentieth century, in an ordinary Midwestern town, to a pair of very
ordinary parents, there was born an extra-ordinary child whose true name is known only as Eddie. A genius
of immeasurable depth, Eddie excelled at his every form of endeavor. At the tender age of four, he had
memorized his own local phone book as well as that of the surrounding half-dozen counties. By six he had
written over a dozen plays and fifty short stories, and was working on drafts for several different (apparently
unfinished) novels at once.
Unfortunately for both Eddie and the world, neither his parents nor his
pedestrian teachers took much notice of his young achievements, and so the lad was nurtured solely on
boredom. Initially Eddie found release from his frustrations in the world of competitive sports, but here, too,
he overachieved and soon found himself competing at an international level on the fencing strip. True to
form, Eddie took his zeal to the tournament finals in England, only to secretly throw the match in an
agonizing denial of how very easy it all had been.
It was at this point that Eddie met the woman who would
be the most influential person in his young and tragically brutal life.
Jocasta Rose was a trainer for the
British fencing team; she found herself fascinated with the daring young prodigy who, she was sure, had
just deliberately relinquished his claim to the world championship. A hot-blooded iconoclast herself, Jackie
confronted Eddie after the match and swept him off his tired and lonely feet into a world of glorious
sensation and romance. Over the space of the next year - which would prove to be the rest of Jocasta
Rose’s life - she and Eddie never parted company again. A terminal illness killed her less than thirteen
months after they first met.
The death of his lover devastated the young genius, but her fiery spirit
lingered in his soul - her will to fight and achieve was twisted by his grief into a monstrous and insatiable
ideal. Returning incognito to the States, he adopted the name of Hunter Rose and soon wrote several best
sellers, taking the literary world by storm at the age of seventeen. But, still, there remained an empty fury in
Hunter Rose’s heart. The need to achieve became the lust to control, and so another alias to an already
fractured personality was born. The crime families of Manhattan were soon confronted with a presence
even deadlier and more heartless than their own.
The name of the masked assassin - Grendel - was spoken
only in whispers, and many a seasoned killer prayed to avoid running afoul of whoever held Grendel’s
contractual reins of the moment. In less than two years, Grendel had moved into a position of power over
one of the major families, and he soon consolidated his realm to include most of the criminal activities
within the entire metropolitan area. He was twenty three.
Once again, he had won easily over seemingly
insurmountable odds. But where was the challenge that would unseat him, the battle he could never win,
the heart of fire that would rival his own?
In fact, it was earlier in his nefarious career that Grendel
first encountered the two lives that would ultimately prove to be the undoing of his own. The adopted niece
of a crooked real-estate mogul, Stacy Palumbo captured what little empathy still existed in Hunter Rose’s
icy heart by her unnatural resemblance to his first love. Following the death of her uncle at Grendel’s hand,
Stacy came to live with Hunter as his legal ward. Ironically, the only other friend to this lonely child was
Grendel’s greatest enemy, Argent, the mysterious wolf.
In Stacy, Hunter saw the potential and innocence
that might have been his own lot, and, in Argent, he found the fury and power that were indeed his fate.
This pathetic triangle was destined for tragedy, of course, and Stacy’s discovery of her mentor’s true
identity precipitated the climax. Grendel and Argent met in a final, ferocious battle schemed by the mind of
Stacy that left the wolf broken and withdrawn, and proved to be the ultimate doom for the man the world
had known as Hunter Rose."
Paraphrased from Grendel War Child #3
Hunter Rose
captured the essence of the manipulation and the deceptive underworkings that is the prime means of evil’s
influence. He is the closest to what I view the devil to be - personified lawful evil.
Hunter Rose died, but
of course, the essence of the devil lived on, continuing to thrive and grow off of human’s darker desires.
The next manifestation of Grendel came through Christine Spar, the daughter of Stacy. Through her
delving into the life of her mother, she was swept into the mask of Grendel.
There have been many
Grendel’s after that, each with it’s own twist of the original black and white devil. Grendel has the heart of
evil and works so well undetected that, to me, he is the epitome of the graceful intervention and ultimate
destruction that can be done in the lives of others. To quote a great movie, “The greatest trick the devil ever
pulled was convincing the world that he didn’t exist.” The Grendel story is an incredibly complex but
extraordinarily detailed examination of the devil’s hand in both personal lives and wordly affairs.
Click on these and the other pictures for a larger image
“Somewhere in the latter part of the twentieth century, in an ordinary Midwestern town, to a pair of very
ordinary parents, there was born an extra-ordinary child whose true name is known only as Eddie. A genius
of immeasurable depth, Eddie excelled at his every form of endeavor. At the tender age of four, he had
memorized his own local phone book as well as that of the surrounding half-dozen counties. By six he had
written over a dozen plays and fifty short stories, and was working on drafts for several different (apparently
unfinished) novels at once.
Unfortunately for both Eddie and the world, neither his parents nor his
pedestrian teachers took much notice of his young achievements, and so the lad was nurtured solely on
boredom. Initially Eddie found release from his frustrations in the world of competitive sports, but here, too,
he overachieved and soon found himself competing at an international level on the fencing strip. True to
form, Eddie took his zeal to the tournament finals in England, only to secretly throw the match in an
agonizing denial of how very easy it all had been.
It was at this point that Eddie met the woman who would
be the most influential person in his young and tragically brutal life.
The name of the masked assassin - Grendel - was spoken
only in whispers, and many a seasoned killer prayed to avoid running afoul of whoever held Grendel’s
contractual reins of the moment. In less than two years, Grendel had moved into a position of power over
one of the major families, and he soon consolidated his realm to include most of the criminal activities
within the entire metropolitan area. He was twenty three.
Once again, he had won easily over seemingly
insurmountable odds. But where was the challenge that would unseat him, the battle he could never win,
the heart of fire that would rival his own?
Hunter Rose
captured the essence of the manipulation and the deceptive underworkings that is the prime means of evil’s
influence. He is the closest to what I view the devil to be - personified lawful evil.
Hunter Rose died, but
of course, the essence of the devil lived on, continuing to thrive and grow off of human’s darker desires.
The next manifestation of Grendel came through Christine Spar, the daughter of Stacy. Through her
delving into the life of her mother, she was swept into the mask of Grendel.
There have been many
Grendel’s after that, each with it’s own twist of the original black and white devil. Grendel has the heart of
evil and works so well undetected that, to me, he is the epitome of the graceful intervention and ultimate
destruction that can be done in the lives of others. To quote a great movie, “The greatest trick the devil ever
pulled was convincing the world that he didn’t exist.” The Grendel story is an incredibly complex but
extraordinarily detailed examination of the devil’s hand in both personal lives and wordly affairs.
