Grendel vs The Shadow #2
Dark Horse
Words and Pictures:
Matt Wagner

“Drop your weapon, villain!  Or face the pitiless judgment of… The Shadow!”  If that doesn’t get the noirier (noiry-er, noiry, noiree?) parts of your soul tingling, then you have no noir in your soul sir.  Matt Wagner has paired his Neo-Noir (is that a thing or did I just make it up?  Feels right, even if I did just make it up.) villainous hero and matched him step for step with the classic Noir anti-hero, and it makes for a great read.

As The Shadow draws closer to Grendel, Grendel continues to tighten his grip on the underworld.  Of course, you sometimes have to get rid of some weeds before a garden is to your liking, but hey, it happens.  This time it happened with a lethal playing card.  (Seriously, he killed old boy by throwing a card at him and slicing his throat.  That’s bad ass sir.)  The back and forth chess match between these two is classic, the action is solid, and the art is spot on.

I could talk a lot more about this book, but why?  Go buy it.  And I don’t want to hear any of this “But I don’t know anything about The Shadow” nonsense.  Or, “But I’ve never heard of Grendel”.  So what.  Knowing will definitely increase your reading pleasure, but man, Matt Wagner does such a marvelous job of giving you what you need to know without overwhelming you  or leaving you feeling like you’re lost in the dark.  Plus, he draws you in so quickly to these two dark, very similar yet so very different characters, that you can’t help but buy in and want more.  And we only have one more to go.  So go on… grab this one.  And if you haven’t read the first one, grab that, read it, then grab this one.

4.5 out 5 Narrow Escapes