What can I say that already hasn't been said about Digger?
In a way, it's kinda tough to review something so critically acclaimed so far after the fact. I first heard about Digger while the company releasing the omnibus edition, Sofawolf, was still putting out the individual volumes. I heard it was good, and the people who talked about it (granted some of them were the people who put out the book) had nothing but nice things to say. I guess it was nice, but I hadn't had the chance to get it.
Then Sofawolf had the Kickstarter to get an omnibus. And I decided to buy it, and promptly forgot about it until I got an e-mail saying I could download the .pdf of the comic, later finding out I had a softcover on the way. I didn't read the computer copy for a bit, but when I did I lost a few hours as the story slowly sucked me in.
The story follows Digger (short for Digger-of-Unnecessarily-Convoluted-Tunnels) as she quite literally gets lost one day. She's a wombat, and was doing perfectly fine before she hits a patch of bad air, hallucinates, and ends up somewhere completely different than where she started. Once she unearths herself in the temple of the elephant god Ganesh, she quickly comes to the conclusion that her hole was messed with and that she can't go home.
Now, most protagonists finding themselves in a new and unfamiliar world are eager to explore it. Digger, by contrast, wants absolutely nothing to do with it. Perhaps its some of her wombat sensibility, but she doesn't truck with anything supernatural, ESPECIALLY anything having to do with gods. The Statue of Ganesh comments on the fact that she spoke the word 'god' with the same inflection as a foot fungus. Which is interesting, as she has to basically take on a bunch of fantastical elements that she isn't familiar with (including vampiric squash).
The character of Digger is rather interesting of itself. For one, she's female, which is a sadly rare occurrence. Combine that with the fact that she is, as previously stated, perfectly fine to go home, thank you. However, she does have a strong sense of right and wrong, and she's presented with a path to go home that she has to turn down because she knows there's still something else for her to do, to make things right in the world she finds herself in.
Also, there's Shadow. Some kind of demon-thing, Shadow is basically a child who can eat and kill pretty indiscriminately, and is supposed to be evil. However, because it encountered Digger, her sense of right and wrong was imprinted on the creature (however literally) and it ends up being a vibrant character of itself.
When I say the work was critically acclaimed, I do mean that. In 2012, Digger won the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story, and considering the Hugo is a pretty major sci-fi/fantasy industry award and Digger was just this little comic book, it came out of left field. But then, it also spoke to the quality of the comic that it was able to attract the notice of the Hugo committee.
Essentially, Digger is good. Digger is very good. And while the comic came to a very satisfying conclusion, one almost wishes as I do that there was some more to read about the wombat.
