"I love it when I don't die." - The origins of Grimalkin

The character of Grimalkin, or some version of her, has haunted me for several years. I have long been troubled by the fact that in comic books the bad guys tend to get the cooler powers, or at least the ones I dig the most. It's an old maxim that villains tend to me interesting than heroes, largely because the heroes tend to be both safe and conservative, typically maintaining the status quo and protecting the world from danger or change. Of course, you do see the 'freedom fighter' type from time to time, but usually they are struggling to bring down oppressive states, not fighting crime in the streets.

Since I was a kid, I've loved shysters, schemers and con men; I'm not sure why, but it may well reflect badly on my moral fiber. Characters who live by their wits, either good or bad, have made me smile and wriggle with delight. This type is very common in old faerie tales like Puss 'n' Boots and the Three Billy Goats Gruff (two of my favorites), where roguish underdogs defeat a superior foe using only the words from their mouths.

As I got older and started to develop more of a moral compass, my love for this type never waned, but I started to get into characters who used the power of deception for good, especially characters like James Garner's Jim Rockford, a former conman turned private eye. Rockford also got his ass kicked from time to time, further cementing his underdog status. And maybe that's when it started; as a kid, I was a milk-faced imaginative runt with arms like swizzle sticks, so the thought of bringing down a guy twice my size using the few tools I possessed, namely a quick wit and a large vocabulary, really struck a chord.

So back to superheroes. By and large, in the comic books the heroes are straight shooters, though there are of course exceptions; Superman is called the Big Blue Boy Scout for a reason, but Batman has effectively used smoke bombs and disguises in his single-minded war on crime. However most of the times, the deceivers are people like Mysterio, Mystique and Mastermind, manipulative basterds who think only of themselves.

So the 'ex-criminal deceiver done good' is a very cool concept to me, and this was a big part of the drive to create Lil' Grimmie; take a superpower normally associated with bad guys (shapeshifting), give it to a young woman struggling to make it on her own, add some attitude and a somewhat tragic past ("Oh the poor thing!") and you have the basics of a fun character that hopefully the world will love.

We shall see!