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Have fun with it. Read it. Reread it. Obsessively memorize it. That's fun! Measure it. How wide are the pages? A delight! Reach into your wallet. Take out the picture of your kids. Replace it with a clipped picture of Pinocchio. The best!

Nah, don't forget about your kids. And don't clip pictures out of the book. But maybe now when you read a classic fairy tale or watch a Disney movie, you'll remember Grimmer Tales and crack up just a bit. That's all I want. To screw up your memories of childhood stories forever. It's a humble request.

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There were pages for Grimmer Tales that didnt make it or that were altered. Either they werent funny enough, confusing, or just too dirty. Heres the original Ugly Duckling:

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Its a mess. Im glad that I have a girlfriend to tell me when my desk is covered in 9 days worth of TV dinner trays and redbull cans. Ive been giving some thought to this lately. In my mind, have two career paths that obsessively require all of my time if Im to do well at them. Cartooning and stand-up comedy. So when Im working on one Im thinking of the other. Its only slowly that Ive started to think of them as almost the same thing. Drawn jokes and stage jokes have the same goal. Power. Just kidding. Laughter.

Heres what I do on a daily basis. I haphazardly work on drawings during the day. This includes thinking about comic ideas, thumbnailing strip layouts, drawing pages, and getting distracted by youtube videos old people fighting. Wisdom lines make their anger adorable. Anything can distract me. Im like a gnat that appreciates comic books. Then at any time, day or night, when an idea pops into my head for a stage joke, Ill write it down. It can be very similar to how I write comic strips. Either the joke comes into my head fully formed or theres a general concept that I have to widdle down into something. Heres one that was fully formed:

Parents say cheesy things

My step-dad used to say, Erik, you make a better door than a window

Which is weird, because he also said I'd never be part of his home

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A fair number of these ideas just popped into my head before I thought about doing a book.  Like Humpty Dumpty is a giant egg.  Of course he gets laid and hatches.  But by and into what?  He's not a normal egg.  What comes out?  A bird or tentacles?  A bird makes sense.  But I love tentacles.  Bird tentacles?  No, just a bird, you're already getting weird. 

Other stories I had to think about more.  I have a giant book of The Brother's Grimm fairy tales that I've read cover to cover a handful of times.  And there are some great stories in there, but I kind of had to stick with the ones that are in the public lexicon so that people would be familiar enough with the story to get the joke.  Otherwise a bit about "Old Iron Boots" would be like hearing about your friend's cousin's antics.  It may be funny, but requires more backstory than payoff.  And I want people to be familiar enough with the characters to just play with them.

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I made Grimmer Tales because I've always loved fairytales and twisting ideas.    Of course, fairy tales started out twisted.  They used to be full of wicked stepsisters cutting off their toes to fit into slippers and woodcutters hacking animals apart.  They were great!  But then things got softened and Disney-fied.  At base, still entertaining, but far too nice.  Moral lessons were erased and replaced with "and they all lived happily ever after".  That's something a mental patient would say.  I wanted to say something that a different mental patient would say.   So I went at these stories with the idea of RE-twisting them.

So that's pretty much what this book is.  Modern twists on old fairy tales.  What I think would happen today with fairy tale situations.  There's still plenty of magic, but of course the world has changed quite a bit.  Things we know now open whole new scenarios.  While it might be possible to get over the moon, a naked jumping cow might not be the best one to do it.    Or even as nice as mice and birds might be, if they make you a dress it's not going to be pretty.  Otherwise there would be sweatshops full of them.

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Erik Bergstrom is our guest bloggers during the week of January 4th. If you have any questions for Erik Bergstrom, add a comment to any of his posts. Here is some more information about Grimmer Tales: A Wicked Collection of Happily Never After Stories:

A hilarious collection of upended fairy tales that will recast your classic family favorites in an all-wrong light

Remember those beloved fairy tales you read as a child? Where the damsel in distress is rescued by the handsome prince and then they all live happily ever after? Well Grimmer Tales is just like that. Minus the happy and the ever after!

In these pages you'll find classic tales twisted, tweaked, and riddled with morbid humor. Little Boy Blue blows his brains out, Pinocchio impales his dentist when asked if he's been flossing and Rapunzel's head comes off at its stem when her prince charming climbs the tower.

Get ready for your nostalgia-o-meter to flicker enthusiastically while shivers course up your spine at the all-wrong acts committed by the heroes and heroines of yesteryear.