TGON Meets Graveweaver

Interested in a series that will make you question what makes one good or evil? As a long-time fan, I am pleased to introduce the American author, artist, streamer, and certified elf, Graveweaver. 

Gravewear is the creator of the newly returned Supernatural WEBTOON series I’m the Grim Reaper, which features Scarlet, a woman who died and deals with Satan to escape eternal damnation and becomes one of his three reapers. Scarlet must kill one sinner a day to save herself, but can she keep on with her job when she meets human detective and sinner Chase Carter and the lines between innocent and guilty begin to blur? Read along to find out, and tell us in the comments what you love most about the series so far!

I’m the Grim Reaper is a fantastic series with scenes that will appease anyone who loves deadly supernatural encounters and characters with questionable moral compasses. To support Graveweaver and gain access to character profiles, illustrations, bonus art, and more, consider signing up for their Patreon for as little as two dollars a month! Their artwork is EPIC!

If you want to learn about Graveweaver’s comic and creative process, the following passage includes an in-depth Q&A that delves into what it takes to be a comic creator and what it took to create the story and characters of I’m the Grim Reaper. 

1. What led you to become a comic creator? 

Well, what led me to be an artist was that I wasn’t good at anything else. My grades were C’s and low B’s across the board, I had no athletic skills, and I wasn’t popular at all and a bit socially awkward (It wasn’t shyness, I was so loud and outgoing that it was annoying!). So I had to be an artist, or I had nothing going for me.

A story I tell on occasion was when I was about 11, and I wanted to draw manga. So I found an actual mangaka who spoke English and messaged them asking if it was possible to be a mangaka as an American, and they basically gave me an answer of “I won’t say it’s impossible, but it’s extremely unlikely, and even less likely you’ll be able to live off of it.’” So I kind of threw out the comic making entirely (Specifically because my art style is so anime-looking, I thought manga was the only way to do comics.)

But I still did comics in my spare time. It was a fun thing for me because I like to tell stories. And then, one day, WEBTOON asked me to be an Original creator. So you could say things ended in a way I didn’t expect. Never say never, I guess?

2. What inspires you? 

What inspires me most is video games! People always look shocked when I tell them this, but the story that gave me my initial fascination with gray morality is Warcraft III. There’s a character called Arthas Menethil whose story tackles morally complex situations that the fandom still argues if he was justified in doing to this day (Google “Was the Culling of Stratholme Justified” and read thread upon thread of people arguing with each other!)

I also get inspiration from things like YouTube video essayists like Jacob Geller, who write very poignant pieces on the nature of human fear, or even video essays from creators like Hbomberguy and Pyrocynical breaking down stories in popular media so that I can understand what other people think makes them good or bad.

3. Can you describe your average work day? 

My average work day for WEBTOON involves me getting up, having a coffee, working for 6 hours, running to find lunch, then working for another 6 hours and collapsing in bed!

It’s not like this every day, I can work pretty fast and get everything I need to be done for one chapter in four days, but I’m a marathon worker. I don’t like taking breaks. If I have something else to do in a day, I can’t focus. I must work, play a video game, or touch the grass all day. 

4. What inevitably led you to use WEBTOON as a platform? 

So I made a lot of webcomics for fun, and back in the day, you’d have to buy your own site and domain and install a webcomic uploader onto it, and it was a total pain. I had stopped making webcomics for a while; my last one was in 2011 when I was still in high school, so in 2018, I wondered if there was finally an aggregate site for webcomics.

And there was! WEBTOON! But I had never heard of it. So I asked around, and my friend told me WEBTOON was really, really big in Korea. And I was like, oh okay, it’s an early thing – might as well use it; I don’t feel like paying for a domain for a comic no one was going to read. The rest is history.

5. What inspired I’m the Grim Reaper? What drives you to tell this particular story? 

I’m the Grim Reaper is the kind of story I would like to read. I don’t often think, “What would kids like these days?” I mostly think, “What would I like?” And I put that in the story. At the end of the day, I have to be happy and entertained with what I’m creating because I have to feel motivated to make it week after week. (And I’m very grateful for people who share the same taste as me and read it!!!)

6. Who is your favorite I’m the Grim Reaper character, and why? 

I definitely see my favorite characters in a very different way than readers do. The characters I like in my own works are where I feel I’ve accomplished the goals and themes I set for them. With that being said, I like my main character, Scarlet. She does a lot of stuff wrong. A LOT. At the start, she has some arguable reasons for her daily murder, but near the end of season 3, she did things you can’t even debate were justified – they were just wrong. 

But I did a decent job showing people how she got to that point. How a character who seemed reasonable at the start of the comic could be driven to such lengths out of her unbearable fear of loneliness, and how her actions move the story forward into the new world in season 4.

7. What would you suggest to aspiring comic creators?

Just do the comic! Seriously! Pick up that pen and draw your first panel! I see aspiring creators overthinking everything. Trying to get good at anatomy, paneling, coloring, and decoding the human genome is too much! Just make the comic!! You can’t learn to make comics without making comics, SO MAKE YOUR COMIC!!!

8. We were curious as it looks like I’m the Grim Reaper might have started on the CANVAS platform. Is that true? If so, what did you learn from your time as a CANVAS creator, and how do you apply that now as an Originals creator?

Yes, many eons ago, it was on CANVAS. I learned not to overthink things. I intentionally put very little effort into the art because I wanted my story to be interesting enough that people stuck around even though the art was lazy. And it’s not that I thought it WOULD be good enough for people to stick around, but rather, I wanted to improve to a point where they would eventually stick around. More than anything, I saw the CANVAS version of I’m the Grim Reaper as an experience I would actively learn from. It was by no means my magnum opus; it was very much a throwaway story that I never intended to get this big.

Dedicating myself to a weekly series taught me a better work ethic. A common misconception, in general, is that people are born with a good work ethic. Work ethic is a trained thing, just like every other skill. I used to make four webcomic pages, then drop the entire story and have a new webcomic the next day. But over the years, I would do four pages, then my next project would have seven, then my next would have ten, and now we’re at I’m the Grim Reaper which has one-hundred-fifty-one chapters. And I’m still learning to this day. I hope I never stop learning!

I’m the Grim Reaper has officially returned for its fourth season, and new episodes will debut every following Sunday, so if you’re new to the series, now is the perfect time to binge and learn what killed Scarlet in the first place!