Digger, Ursula Vernon

I’ve been meaning to read Digger for years. But I am mostly-allergic to serial web-comics (I can barely manage to keep up with non-serial ones like xkcd and A Softer World) and I never think to look for print volumes, so when I heard about the Kickstarter for an omnibus edition, I jumped all over it.

Friends, the omnibus edition is gorgeous and I am so happy to have a copy for my shelves.  It also weighs about ten million pounds (okay, only 4 pounds but that is still really heavy!).  If you can afford to, get the individual volumes (the omnibus is cheaper than all 6 volumes, even at full price).  Or read online!  Luckily for me, the Kickstarter rewards also included a PDF and since I have a tablet, that’s how I ended up reading it. 

And it’s wonderful. And I can’t imagine reading it at the rate of four pages a week over eight years. The suspense! Because this has got plot galore and honestly, it’s amazing how everything ties so neatly together in the most unexpected ways.

It’s about a wombat named Digger and how she ends up far, far, away from home.  There’s a statue of Ganesh which is sometimes inhabited by the god, there are hyena-people, a demon child, and all sorts of odd nonsense going on that Digger would prefer not to deal with, being a sensible wombat, but there’s nothing to do but to get on with things.

And she does–and it’s a marvelous story, one that’s funny and sad and important in all the right ways.  Oh, Ed.

The art is gorgeous–I don’t know much about drawing or comics, but I simply can’t imagine this story having the same kind of impact done in full color.  I love the attention to detail and I love the sheer personality of the art.  It’s a perfect marriage of drawing and story and this novice comics reader found it very easy to follow.  Also, there are footnotes. Hilarious footnotes.

All in all, a great story. So glad I finally read it. So sad I’ll never be able to read it again for the first time.