A Little Grim / Een Kleine Gein
Eager for a moment of peace, the Grim Reaper sends his pre-school son outside to play. Embarking on a journey filled with dark humor and poignant lessons, the young tot navigates a series of whimsical encounters, delving into the delicate balance of life & death, the unpredictability of existence, and the many ironies that life presents.
‘A Little Grim‘ offers a unique blend of dark humor and touching life lessons without using too many words. Perfect for readers who enjoy stories that entertain and provoke thought. Follow this peculiar tot as he discovers what it means to live and laugh… And be a ‘good boy’.
A Little Grim is a 44-page full color one-shot comic (A4 size/Euro Comic) which is now available for purchase on this store both in physical form as well as a digital version both in an English as well as a Dutch version.
A story made one stacked bottle at a time.
I can’t remember exactly how I came up with the idea for A Little Grim but I knew I wanted it to look like the comic “De Kleine Robbe/Le Petit Spirou” that I very much enjoyed as a kid (and still as an adult seeing it balances childrens and adult entertainment quite well). One of the things I struggled with at the beginning was the tone of the dialogue. With the subject of death it quickly became very pompous and weighty and that didn’t fit with the style nor the character of Little Grim. Making it too childlike didn’t work either for numerous reasons. Eventually I remembered the way they used curses back in the day – several icons depicting bombs and knives and others – and it all fell in place. No dialogue would be used but what dialogue there would be would be iconographic.
Doing this sped up the process and gave the book room to breathe. It countered the sometimes heavy subject with levity and made it possible to be funny without sounding crass or pretentious. Colors would be vibrant and simple – like De Kleine Robbe. Needless to say I had to use SOME text – especially in the background for signage and other worldly elements – and I wanted to say something at the end of the book that would have been some kind of rebus if I did it in icons alone. Most of it was formed while putting bottles on a brewery’s conveyor belt and drawn on actual paper like the olden days. Too bad I didn’t have a decent scanner and my 15-year old ink didn’t work anymore but still… Digital saved the day.
Regardless, I’m very pleased with how A Little Grim turned out (even though I’m never 100% pleased with what I make) and I hope you will enjoy the book.
