In April 2017, while hovering around my booth at Monsterpalooza, I was approached by a couple editors from Kaboom! comics. They asked me if I would be interested in contributing to an Over the Garden Wall comic book special. I was most likely reserved in my reply but on the inside I was elated. I’m a huge fan of the series by Pat McHale and the world in which he created for animation is the world in which my head lives daily.
In the months to follow, I conceived of an idea inspired by the legend of Robert Johnson and the Devil at the crossroads. For research and inspiration, I read tales of diabolical dealings like Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Devil and Daniel Webster by Stephen Vincent Benét, and The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving. I researched old folk songs like The Devil and the Ploughman, Sold It to the Devil, and Old Lady and the Devil. I dug deep into the German legend of Faust, the diabolical speculations around Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini, and other folklore found in A History of the Devil by William Woods, Magic, Supernaturalism and Religion by Kurt Seligmann, and The History of Hell by Alice K. Turner. But it was in discovering an eleventh century sermon titled On False Gods, where Archbishop Wulfstan II warns of encounters with Mercury (or Odin) at the crossroads, that I was led into Norse Mythology and the stories involving Odin.
Thus, Odin’s Bargain was bore into existence.
“Odin’s Bargain presents a seamless combination of Over the Garden Wall and Grimly’s own work, such that things that shouldn’t seem to work on the surface end up working perfectly”
-Multiversity Comics
Over the Garden Wall 2017 Special was released Sept 20th, 2017. Currently, I am offering the book for sale at my webstore. All books ordered come signed on the cover.