Jofrid Sandgren Østenstad
Deaths Grand Tour
Ongoing comic project.
"Death's Grand Tour" is a graphic novel where Death brings his reluctant apprentice on a Grand Tour through Enlightenment Europe in order to learn about the meaning of life and death's role in all of it.
Death's Grand Tour is a magical realism bildungsroman in a historical setting, with a solid dose of gallows humor and some hints of gothic romance here and there. The main target audience is young adult.
Dødens Dannelsesreise is planned as a series of albums that can be read independently of each other, but which also form a longer story.
The series will address themes relating to life and death, growth and change, history, art and philosophy.
The project placed top 25 in Strand forlag's comic competition 2024.
"In order to understand death, one must first understand life" - "and vice versa"
Emilia, recently decased and new apprentice to Death, can't stand her new work, finding it depressing and morbid and morbid.
A meeting with a rude nobleman setting out on his Grand Tour gives Death the idea that a classical "Grand Tour" might be just what Emilia needs in order to get a broader perspective on things.
In the first book, which i am currently working on, the journey goes to Paris, the cultural and intellectual metropolis of the enlightenment era, to learn about life here now.
Emilia, from a rural commoner background, is thrown into a new world where knowing the ins and outs of social etiquette can easily be a matter of life and death, and both Emilia and Death may learn something they didn't expect...
"Humans die, but humanity lives on - and the traces of the people of the past remain, reminding us of who they were"
Concept art: Death
Concept art:
Emilia, Deaths apprentice
