Comics

Sketch dump featuring Johannes and his father Richard (Death in his human form). • Richard took care of Johannes for about the first 4 years of his life (Sigrid died a day after giving birth). As the toll of transformation between his true form and his human body was starting to show, Richard left his toddler son with his brother Heinrich’s family and returned to the Underworld (Sigrid’s mother Aina still held a grudge towards him after she witnessed his transformation into Death and removing Sigrid’s soul). Though Johannes doesn’t remember much of his early childhood, Richard took him almost everywhere he went (he does have a favorite memory: hearing Richard singing him to sleep; Johannes sings karaoke to emulate his father’s voice). • It’s not known if Johannes is a Deity like Death, but he (as well as his son Cedrick) show physical signs as a direct descendant - his bones appear as tattoos when he performs his role as Grim Reaper (they still paint their faces / wear masks as part of traditional Reaper attire). It makes sense he’s ranked the world’s top Grim Reaper as the result of a match setup by Fate Herself (she thought Death could use a few helpers with the exponential boom of human souls over millennia). • Death normally is in his skeletal form, but whenever there’s a case of a God-class monster spawning or going rogue, he’s often summoned back temporarily as a human again to assist Reapers; he can only be summoned by direct relatives, and most of the time he returns as the age Richard would have been if he was “still alive” (he has returned at the age he “died” a few times, making it awkward for Johannes because they’ll physically be around the same age). Johannes doesn’t like having him around mainly because he’s reminded of how Richard left him behind as a boy (as well as the inappropriate nature of his parents’ relationship despite being in an era when it’s tolerated - his mother was only a teenager while his father was more than twice her age). —