If you’ve read any of the Grumble and Gasp stories, you may have noticed they take place in a world where the drawings from medieval illuminated manuscripts are entirely real.

Killer rabbits. Snails as horses. The whole delightful mess.

But here’s a little secret:

With the exception of Grumble and Gasp themselves, every single character in the series is taken directly from the realest of really real marginalia illustrations!

So I thought it might be fun, each week when I drop a new chapter, to share the original artwork that inspired one of the characters featured in that chapter.

But first… we’ve got a bit of catching up to do.

This week, we had the Bone Mother, that charming young lady in the middle there, who proved to be quite a pain in the neck for Gasp’s brother, Zaghnal.

Behold the Danse Macabre. Medieval marginalia is full of examples of everyday people partying down with death itself. These illustrations were meant to remind us that death comes for us all, whether pauper or prince.