Then it gets weird.
Characters: There are many characters in Digger, so here are a few important ones:
Digger (Of-Unnecessarily-Convoluted-Tunnels)
A female wombat, and the main character. She's an extremely straightforward thinker, but her tendency to interfere complicates her journey. A lot of the humor comes from her attitude towards the world she's thrust into, as well as her attitude towards problem solving.
Statue of Ganesh:
A statue of the elephant headed god Ganesh.
The statue of Ganesh is just that, a statue, and therefore
cannot move its face. Instead Vernon uses shadows and changes in angle to convey feeling.
'Ed'
A male hyena, cast out by his tribe and stripped of name and identity. Before Digger names him Ed, he refers to himself as 'It'.
Shadowchild
This is the shadow child. No one is sure what it is.
Shadowchild is probably my favorite character. It has
unknown and unearthly powers, it literally crawled out of an animal corpse, it
is made of pure darkness, and at the same time
SO CUTE XD
Murai: A female human, and former member of the Veiled, a warrior order, now a worshipper of Ganesh. She looked on the face of a goddess known as the Black Mother, and went mad. Certain things still trigger her
The Plot
The plot unfolds pretty slowly, and is told from the point of view of Digger. We follow her efforts to find out where she is, how she got here, and how to get home. These efforts are curtailed by her compassionate and rather interfering nature. Since the story is in essence a mystery, I'm reluctant to give away the ending.
The Art style is notable for the black and white visuals, textures evocative of both woodcuts and ink paintings, the use of splash pages, and the switches in style depending on who's in charge of
narrative
Ed tells a story:
Murai tells the story of the Black Mother:
There are quite a few nods to comics and other works of literature:
I love this comic. it's online for free. READ IT
In your presentation I got a sense of what some of the themes were, but I would have liked to have seen you elaborate on them here. Essentially, "Digger" sounds like a "road" story-and typically, in this type of story, the hero goes through challenges on the journey that force changes upon him/her(thus it is an internal as well as external journey)--and then brings something of what they've found(wisdom? fire?) back home. So I'm curious, what challenges does Digger face on her journey, and do you think she was changed by it? If so, how? What did she find on the way?
ReplyDeleteJust when I think I've narrowed down my "list of webcomics to read," someone recommends another one. The concept of the Black Mother in particular is an interesting one. It deals with a deity created by those who believe it existed, a concept which has also been seen in other media, including one of the most recent chapters of Gunnerkrigg Court. It presents an interesting variation on the chicken and the egg. Are deities the creators or were they created by the minds of mortals and given consciousness? This comic seems to be greative and insightful and I definitely will be checking it out soon.
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