Contained in four booklets of 40 pp. each (unpaginated); color. A serial comic, supporting the main feature Amythyst, in 4 consecutive issues (numbered 0-3) of the monthly serial Sword of Sorcery. After its fourth episode Beowulf was discontinued in Sword of Sorcery, though with an indication that it would return. A continuation in a fifth episode, also written by Bedard but with a different artist (Javier Pina), did appear later in 2013 in a different monthly serial, DC Universe Presents (see separate listing).

Location details:

Chapter 1, "The Perfect Soldier," in issue 0 (Nov. 2012), pp. [27]-[37].
Chapter 2, "Iron Trolls," in issue 1 (Dec. 2012), pp. [21]-[30].
Chapter 3, "The Grendel," in issue 2 (Jan. 2013), pp. [26]-[37].
Chapter 4, "Iron Trolls [II]," in issue 3 (Feb. 2013), pp. [26]-[37].

Set in a post-apocalyptic future littered with remnants of present-day and next-gen military equipment, the sequence of 4 episodes begins with teenage Wiglaf seeking out the legendary Beowulf to help Hrothgar against Grendel and discovering that the long-dormant warrior is a terrifying and unpredictable super-soldier. In the final episode presented in Sword of Sorcery, Wiglaf attacks Grendel's and Beowulf's "mother"—a laboratory scientist with cybernetic features who brings Grendel under control and does not seem inclined to threaten Beowulf—after she explains that both of these larger-than-life killers are products of a genetic engineering program in which she participates, meant to provide ordinary people with a military force capable of battling superheroes and metahuman villains (from the DC Comics universe) who had begun to render humankind obsolete. Wiglaf's attack revives Grendel, and while Beowulf is fighting him the "mother" destroys her own laboratory and presumably Grendel with it. Beowulf and Wiglaf's escape is elided but they arrive safely back at Hrothgar's court announcing Grendel's death.

The relationship of this 2012-13 story to DC Comics' earlier (1975-76, 2008) Beowulf storyline is unclear, as the mythology of Beowulf's and Grendel's creation appears irreconcilable with the earlier material. However, given that all are from DC Comics, some way of connecting the stories within the DC universe may have been intended.

• Kathleen Forni, Beowulf's Popular Afterlife in Literature, Comic Books, and Film (New York: Routledge, 2018), chap. 7.

BAM.