Grendel: Red, White, and Black #2

The Devil's Reign continues! Matt Wagner and Dark Horse present five more tales guaranteed to make your heart race and your blood run cold. There is only one thing that Hunter Rose -- the man behind the assassin's mask of Grendel -- holds more precious than his own life, and that is his adopted daughter Stacy Palumbo. But Hunter soon finds himself at odds with Stacy over her new friend, a wolf named Argent, who also happens to be Grendel's most deadly nemesis! Five stories. Five artists. One Vision. From the politics of organized crime to the ancient ethics of the Samurai warrior code and beyond, Wagner and company continue to explore the rich tapestry that is the world of Grendel!

Stories by Matt Wagner:

• Devil Dreams - art by Kelley Jones, lettering by Jason Hvam. Argent tries to find Hunter Rose through an amateur spell-caster, brutally killing a prisoner for the macabre ingredients, but has a horrible hallucination of his past instead.
• Chase the Devil - art by Mike Hawthorne, lettering by Sean Konot. A rookie cop's partner is killed by Grendel. The rookie chases Hunter through the city in an attempt to prove himself, but is killed for his efforts.
• Devil's Karma - art by Andi Watson, lettering by Jason Hvam, font by Woodrow Phoenix. A series of stylized splash pages with short haiku poems describing Rose.
• Roulette Du Diable - art by Dan Brereton, typesetting by Cary Grazzini. The art shows Stacy waiting at home, bored, while Hunter is out, then listening as he makes his chilling speech, which is given in detail for the first time, to the police about the Seaboard Massacre. This is when she first realizes he is Grendel. The text details, also for the first time, the exact way each of the 23 mob bosses in the Massacre was killed.
• Devil Crossed - pencils by Phil Hester, inks by Ande Parks, lettering by Sean Konot. A retelling of how Barry Palumbo tried to double-cross Argent and Grendel, for which Grendel killed him. This story is also told in Devil by the Deed, a back-up feature in Mage, and in the first volume of Grendel.