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The World

The world of Grumble is divided into four continents, one each in the west, south, north, and east. The people all have colorful bodies and skinny black arms and legs. Men have flat heads and women have round or pointed heads. Other strange creatures also live there, such as Purple or the Fish.

The western continent is home to Grumbletown and the Grumblecampers. The people have colored bodies with black eyes. Plants from there are brown or white with purple bark.

The southern continent is a place of magic and danger. The people there resemble Grumblecampers but with eyes that are a lighter shade of their skin color. Plants here are green with brown bark.

The island is similar to the southern continent. People here have white eyes. The plants are purple with red bark.

The northern continent is cold and densely populated. The people here form black and white pairs of corresponding shapes. They do not have mouths, and can stretch and change their bodies. Plants here are orange with brown bark.

The eastern continent is still shrouded in mystery. The people who come from there have metallic skin and colored eyes.

A series of mysterious whirlpools links the continents and allows for rapid travel between them.

The Languages

Each continent has its own language, though they are all mutually intelligible.

Grumble uses distinct letters with spaces and punctuation, written from left to right.

Oversea consists of lines and colored circles. It has spaces but no punctuation, and is written only generally from left to right. There is a rare non-colored version that uses extra symbols instead of colors.

Monochrome has blocks that form tight lines with no spaces or punctuation. It is written from left to right.

Metalese uses flowing conjoined letters with spaces and punctuation. It is written from top to bottom.

The Comic

Grumble is a comic. I like writing systems and alphabets and stuff, so I decided to make my own. I of course didn't make anything with any sort of internal consistency, but that's not important. Originally the font only included letters, a couple of punctuation marks, and even then not every letter in the Roman alphabet.

One day I decided to draw a picture and include my new font in it somehow. I don't know why I decided on strangly shaped colorful blob people with stick limbs, but that is what came out.

The original Grumblecampers drawing.

One day the gang was all like "We need to make comics and put them on a website!" When I decided to make Grumble into a comic, I needed a new font, so I remade it in a handdrawn, more cartoony way, and included several symbols that I hadn't had before, such as the rest of the letters used in English as well as more punctuation and numerals.

Because this makes the comic pretty much one big cryptogram people tend to want to translate it, but I don't think that's really necessary or even appropriate. Sometimes I will do things to the text to make it harder (but never impossible) to translate, just to discourage it (or maybe encourage it?), or maybe I just make a lot of typos. The idea is that you're not supposed to be able to understand what is being said, only that something is being said. So the length of a word balloon or the repetition of dialogue within a balloon can carry meaning without actually knowing what is being said.

It's not necessarily funny. Sometimes a comic will just be two people talking about nothing in general with nothing happening. Sometimes it will just be a scene or even a single facial expression that I wanted to draw, that just gets confusing because you have no idea what's going on. I think perhaps it's best if you make up your own dialogue, or perhaps imagine some kind of generic foreign language in your head whenever you read it. But really, the comic can be interpreted however you like, and there is no wrong way to read it.

It's not supposed to be high art. I just like bright primary colors.