A good writer should make the reader empathise with a villain, perhaps even make us totally agree with them. Matt Kindt and the rest of the creative team behind Solomon Grundy #1 definitely succeed in the former if not the latter as well. Before we go any further though it should be pointed out that this is an incredibly violent comic. One of the criticisms laid at the New 52 is that it is something of a calling back to the gratuitously violent days of the Nineties and in particular Image comics. For the most part this is unjustified, the kind of throwaway statement made by those kind of people who actually havent read the material. Violence in comics, as it should be in any medium, has to have a frame of context and this comic has it in abundance. For those unfamilar with the character; Grundy is an undead powerhouse whose main role in much of DC media has been to appear and play some kind of evil Hulk role. By that is meant, having near limitless strength but sadly have limited speech and intelligence. This role is usually subordinate or as the tank member of a short lived group of super villains and Grundy is swiftly dealt with by the featured hero or heroes before he rises from the dead to play that same role once more. Grundys role however was significantly changed in the pages of 2012s Earth 2. Grundy is still strong, undead and unkillable, but his speech is relatively more prosaic and his supernatural qualities have been greatly accentuated. One could argue he has a greater degree of intelligence now as well, though it would be something quite brooding and rarely revealed. What is certain is that the Grey Man, as he is now known, is now the avatar of the Rot, one of a trinity of metaphysical abstracts related to the manifest powers of flora, fauna and disease/decay. This issue picks up sometime after where the first major arc and issue #6 of Earth 2 left off. Grundy having been marooned on the moon, falls like Lucifer, back to Earth. As with many of the Villains Month titles, we are given a revised origin of our antagonist in question when we are taken back over a century to Slaughter Swamp. What follows is the tragic and heartbreaking story of a simple man who when faced with the exploitation and loss of what little he has in life gives in to retribution and violence. This story is told alongside scenes from the present as Grundy seeks out that person he calls the Green Man so that the same retribution may be visited on him. One of the strengths of this comic is how these tales are interwoven. A writer could simply jump from one time frame to another. However, Kindt uses the Solomon Grundy nursery rhyme with one line recited in the past and the following line recited in the present. This adds not only to the pace and gravity of the narrative but also to the depth of Grundys trauma, lending an almost catatonic haunting to its recitation. As if Grundy repeats it to himself to remind him of the hurt and the hatred that fuel him. The origin ends with Solomon taking his own life, but in another display of masterful writing by Kindt, we dont know quite how he becomes the champion of the Grey. All we know is that death has not completely taken him, his eye wide open in terror as Solomons child screams. The rest of the issue plays out in the present as Grundy continues his quest to find the Green Lantern. As a reader one does find it hard, in the midst of all this tragedy and violence, to not stifle a chuckle as a police S.W.A.T. team are decimated by flying pieces of Grundy shrapnel. Finally as our surely now affirmed anti-hero pieces himself back together reciting the last two lines of the rhyme one cant help but feel that a world that could be so cruel to a man who simply loved his wife and child perhaps deserves the destruction Grundy sows upon it.