10 Comic Book Characters You Wish You Could Be

8. Grendel

Excelling to the point of brilliance in everything he ever had a hand in, young Eddie had memorised every line of Shakespeare by the age of six and written multiple plays, short stories and novels by the age of eight.

By fourteen, he was the finest fencer in the world. That might have been enough for some prodigies… but by seventeen the rechristened Hunter Rose was living a double life as the fearsome hitman and master criminal Grendel. Only a few years later he would control all crime across the entire eastern seaboard of the United States of America. They called Grendel ‘the devil’.

All that, and a murderous gift for combat rendering him a bloody master of mayhem able to go to-to-toe with the Batman are enough to make the first Grendel unspeakably cool. What raises him above your usual stylish ‘perfect killer’ types like Bullseye, Deadshot, Slaymaster or Deathstroke (man, these guys all went to the same random word generator for their names, didn’t they?) is his insouciant style and flair for the dramatic, and his phenomenal charisma.

Creator Matt Wagner has spent years fashioning the sinister legacy of Grendel in comics under the Comico and Dark Horse banners. Even after his death, Hunter Rose would inspire others to take up his name. First pretenders and copycats, flawed and weak, then a whole cult of Grendel; then a worldwide empire that would define generations.

By the 26th century, knights, madmen, cyborgs, vampires and emperors had worn the mask of Grendel. The devil had taken his due.