As you can probably guess, Digger won the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story.

I cannot thank everybody enough–all my readers and fans and friends–for voting for Digger in the Hugo awards. Thank you all. It’s been an honor to throw drawing of wombats at you for all these years. I did not have the slightest notion, when I doodled the first set of wombat drawings, that it would go so far or so strangely or introduce me to such wonderful people as y’all. Thank you.

(Art kindly done by my buddy Egypt Urnash, who does a comic called Decrypting Rita — Not Always Safe For Work!)

“But Ursula!” you say. “The only thing better than a Hugo nomination is an actual Hugo award! How do I vote for Digger? Can I vote for Digger?”

I’m so glad you asked. Because yes, O reader, you CAN vote for Digger if you so desire—Hugos are a…well, not exactly democratic process, more of a republic, really, because it costs money.

In order to vote for the Hugos, you have to get a supporting membership at Worldcon 2012 (or have had one for 2011, or something complicated like that.) This costs you $50 and you get to vote in the Hugos.

Now, if that was all you got, I would say “Dude, ‘Hugo-nominated’ still has the word ‘Hugo’ in it, I don’t need to win that bad, fifty bucks is a lot of money, if it’s burning a hole in your pocket, please donate it to preserve jumping slug habitat or something.”

However, you actually get a lot for the money, because they give you the Hugo Voter Packet. And this includes e-book copies of a whole bunch of the nominees, (including the whole damn run of Digger, in PDF form, as assembled by my enormously talented publisher Jeff) so it works out to a lot of books that are currently in hardcover, a slew of novellas and short stories, some comics—in short, a lot more than $50 worth of content.

Which means that I can say, without feeling too much guilt, “Hey, you can vote for Digger if you want to spend $50 and it’s actually really worth it, because you get copies of some of the very best speculative fiction of the year for the money.”

So, that’s how you vote for Digger if you are so inclined.

If you can’t afford to, please feel absolutely no guilt whatsoever, it does not make you any less dedicated a fan, I am just as happy to have you reading as anybody else, and there were many years when I couldn’t have spent fifty CENTS to vote on something, let alone fifty bucks, so believe me, I understand completely and please, please, don’t apologize.

And if you can afford to, then thank you very much, and if you’re not interested in the voter packet, then hey, how ’bout those jumping slugs, huh?

And that, as they say, is that.

Well.

Huh.

I have been doing this for so long that I find myself somewhat at a loss for words. For the last six months or so, I have been very focused on finally finishing Digger’s unexpectedly epic journey (some of you undoubtedly remember those first five pages, and my constant refrain that I was just doodling and not to get attached!) but I didn’t actually spend much time thinking about what to say once I did.

I guess the only thing to say is “Thank you!” So many readers have given me so much encouragement and support and time over the years that I won’t even try to name them all. I’d say it has been a labor of love, but that’s both a cliche and doesn’t really cover the obsession and stubbornness and the desire to prove that I really COULD finish a giant project, damnit, and the vague fear that if I just stopped in mid-comic, I would be hunted by an angry mob, which all factors. Also, love.

The final print volume of Digger should be available from Sofawolf Press later this year. I’ll put up a post here, and of course the comic will remain up as long as the hosts are willing to host it.

Possibly I’ll have something clever to say in a few days, in which case I’ll put up a post or something, but right now, about all I got is…dude. 759 pages. How ’bout that?

Even at the very end, this comic can still surprise me. I had no idea that bandersnatch had unions, although of course they belong to the Sentient Draft Animal Local, much like pegasi, brontotheres, and soul-moose.

No comic today, as I am in New Orleans, taking a workshop from the awesomely talented Michael DeMeng!

(I will confess, there was almost a different piece of art, with the caption “Show us your picks!” but I wasn’t sure I could get a sufficiently withering glare out of Digger…)

Have fun, see you next week!