Digger (webcomic)

Digger
Cover art for the omnibus edition
Author(s)	Ursula Vernon
Website	http://www.diggercomic.com
Current status / schedule	completed
Launch date	18 March 2003
End date	17 March 2011
Genre(s)	Fantasy

Digger is a webcomic drawn and written by Ursula Vernon. It is also published in print form by Sofawolf Press.

Other characters encountered include the hyenas of Grim Eyes' tribe, human villagers and farmers, human bandits, the acolytes of Ganesh's temple (some of whom hide a disturbing secret beneath their hoods), metaphorical pigeons, skin lizards, a dead god and its servants, and vampiric squash. Dwarves exist in Digger's world, noted for their reliance on magic, but none have appeared in the comic as yet.

In the opening pages, Digger is tunneling alone through the ground, lost and dazed after being intoxicated by a pocket of bad air, causing her to – so the reader is led to believe – hallucinate various things, including the two skin lizards that later appear in the comic. Digging to the surface, she emerges in a temple, where she meets the Statue of Ganesh. Here she finds that something or someone has "magicked up" her tunnel, cutting off her route home. The comic describes her experiences and encounters in the temple, nearby village and surrounding area as she seeks information on the whereabouts of her warren, how she came from there to her present location, and how she might get back.

The collected Digger won the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story and the 2013 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature

Tor.com has described Digger as "fantastic-in-all-senses-of-the-word", praising Vernon's pacing and "tone-perfect mythology", while SF Signal declared that Digger "deserves to be appreciated" and Black Gate lauded Vernon for her portrayal of cultural relativity. Lauren Davis of io9 and ComicsAlliance called Digger an "oddball epic" and praised the titular heroine as an unusual fantasy protagonist and "a delight to watch", citing her pragmatic but softhearted nature, her frankness, and her strong moral center and sense of etiquette.