Grendel is a character that I’ve always found really interesting, partially because of the visual design of the character (and the various iterative riffs on that initial design), and partially because it’s a striking creator-owned franchise. Matt Wagner’s Grendel comics sprawl out from an initial crime tale of a man driven to violent success to that of a global empire and cult. Grendel Tales covers some of those later stories; “The Devil In Our Midst” is a story that takes place in a remote Antarctic station, like a kind of Grendel-flavored version of John Carpenter’s The Thing–complete with Jonah (the Grendel) having virus-infested blood that (unknown to Jonah) causes one of the station residents to explode.