A graphic novel with color art (issue 3 done in grays), published serially in 3 issues: 1, "With Grimmest Gripe" (1999), 40 pp.; 2, "Gear of War" (1999), 32 pp. (unnumbered); 3, "Doom of Glory" (2000), 36 pp. (unnumbered). Completes the work a portion of which had been printed as the Beowulf Promotional Sampler, continuing to use text from the Gummere translation (1909) but drawn from the 1910 Harvard Classics text published by P. F. Collier & Son.

The third installment contains this note inside the front cover:

I must make one big correction. I keep referring to the translation I'm using as the Collier translation, because the original copyright was held by P.F. Collier and Son. In fact, however, the translator is Francis B. Gummere; so I should be calling it the Gummere translation. For those of you who are familiar with the Gummere translation and have been wondering why I seem to be so dense, ha ha, that was a good laugh : )

And inside the back cover, the third installment explains that whereas in the first two issues Hinds had altered the Gummere text only "by subtraction," in the last issue he sometimes makes word substitutions for adjustments of nuance.

Hinds' note on the art media he used, from his website (https://www.garethhinds.com/beowulf.php, captured March 22, 2019):

The three sections of Beowulf are done in different materials. Part 1 is drawn with ink using a dip pen and brush, then colored digitally. Part 2 is drawn and painted on wood panels using technical pen, watercolor, acrylic, and color pencil. Part 3 is drawn like part 1, but colored using Dr. Martin's dye and white charcoal.

The "sections" referred to are those in the single-volume forms of the work (The Collected Beowulf, 2000, and Beowulf, 2007), corresponding to the three issues originally released serially.

The second installment contains this note inside the back cover:

I would like to dedicate this book (and indeed this series) with my apologies to those people in my life who have suffered through my selfishness, particularly those who, when I was younger, I physically bullied or picked on.

Issue 1, "With Grimmest Gripe," begins with this narrative text box:

To hrothgar was given such glory of war,
such honor of combat, that all his kin
obeyed him gladly till great grew his band
of youthful comrades. It came in his mind
to bid his henchmen a hall uprear,
a master mead-house, mightier far
than ever was seen by the sons of earth,
and within it then, to old and young
he would all allot that the Lord had sent him,
save only the land and the lives of his men. (1)

And its final text box, spoken by Hrothgar prior to the all-visual sequence of Beowulf's fight with Grendel, is this:

Never to any man erst I trusted,
since I could heave up hand and shield
this noble Dane-Hall, till now to thee.
Have now and hold this house unpeered,
remember thy glory; thy might declare;
watch for the foe! (17)

Issue 2, "Gear of War," begins with this narrative text box:

To Eastern Danes
had the valiant Geat his vaunt made good,
all their sorrow and ills assuaged,
their bale of battle borne so long,
and all the dole they erst endured,
pain a-plenty. 'Twas proof of this,
when the hardy-in-fight a hand laid down,
arm and shoulder,--all, indeed,
of Grendel's gripe,-- 'neath the gabled roof. (1)

And it concludes with this narrative text box:

Now further it fell with the flight of years,
with harryings horrid, that Hygelac perished,
and Heardred, too, by hewing of swords
under the shield-wall slaughtered lay.

Then Beowulf came as King this broad
realm to wield, and he ruled it well
fifty winters, a wise old prince,
warding his land, until One began
in the dark of night, a Dragon, to rage. (32)

Issue 3, "Doom of Glory," begins with an all-visual sequence of several pages depicting the wandering slave's discovery of the dragon's hoard, his theft of the cup, the dragon's attack, and old Beowulf's questioning of the slave. The first text box backtracks to the lament of the Last Survivor, juxtaposed with a picture of King Beowulf watching a hawk fly through his broken-roofed hall as the slave (holding the cup) and others look on:

Now hold thou, earth, since heroes may not,
what earls have owned! Lo, erst from thee
brave men brought it! But battle-death seized,
and cruelly killing my clansmen all,
robbed them of life and a liegeman's joys.
None have I left to lift the sword,
or to cleanse the carven cup of price,
beaker bright. My brave are gone.
And the helmet hard all haughty with gold,
shall part from its plating. Polishers sleep
who could brighten and burnish the battle mask;
and those weeds of war that were wont to brave
over bicker of shields the bite of steel
rust with their bearer. The ringed mail
fares not far with famous chieftain,
at side of hero! No harp's delight,
no glee-wood's gladness! No good hawk now
flies through the hall! Nor horses fleet
stamp in the burgstead! Battle and death
the flower of my race have reft away." (13; unpaired closing quotation marks sic)

A close-up illustration of the cup on p. 11 shows that it bears a runic inscription, which is a transcription of the first part of the Modern English lines quoted above.

Issue 3's final text box is this:

The folk of the Weders fashioned there
on the headland a barrow broad and high,
by ocean-farers far descried.
They placed in the barrow that precious booty,
the rounds and the rings they had reft erewhile,
hardy heroes, from hoard in cave,--
trusting the ground with treasure of earl,
gold in the earth, where ever it lies
useless to men as of yore it was. (30)

• R. Cera, R. Cioffi, E. Francese, F. Goria, R. Musso, and R. Rosselli Del Turco, “L’eroe germanico raccontato per immagini: il Beowulf di Gareth Hinds,” in Antichità germaniche, II parte, ed. Vittoria Dolcetti Corazza and Renato Gendre (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2002), 191–221.

• Kathleen Forni, Beowulf's Popular Afterlife in Literature, Comic Books, and Film (New York: Routledge, 2018), chap. 5.

• María José Gómez Calderón, “Beowulf and the Comic Book: Contemporary Readings,” Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 55 (2007): 107–27, at 120–22.

BAM.