And because you, Ed, have the crowbar with which to free your tribes ancient god from bondage. So being first will let you hop down onto that divine heart and get to work. Good Luck ED:)
I like how she’s holding her pick when she says that. “Well, you can go first, or you can fight. Your choice, really. Take all the time you need to help you decide, I’ll be right here.”
Also, while sensible (of course!) and all that, it’s also kind of sweet how Digger is thinking of others before herself, even now in the face of liver-shriveling danger.
Thinking of herself, Hawk? Partly, I think; and partly, she may be wishing for someone to come in after us. A good fight might be a little cathartic to her right now.
“… and though you know I love you, Ed, I do NOT trust your ability to do anything violent while perched on a ledge barely wide enough to stand on, whereas I’ve been swinging a pickaxe from a scaffold since before I could talk.”
“And since this is, of course, an immensely frustrating and nerve-wracking moment for the narrative suddenly to switch tracks again, that is precisely what the narrative will now do.” –Douglas Adams
Heh. Little Mother of Earthquakes, protecting the male just like a fierce hunter should! …of course, then Ed and his crowbar get to deal with the heart.
I totally got to preach the Gospel according to Digger today. Okay, that was a little too far. I got to share about Ursula Vernon’s art. A lady I work with happend to look over my shoulder during a break. She noticed me reading Digger and wanted to know if the tales of the Wombat was good for her pre teen. I said “Why sure mamm.” I also plugged the Danny Dragonbreath books.
Usually, I’ll tell a person, “There’s this really cool story about a talking wombat and…” And then I watch them change the subject. I’m like “Wait, wait, no it’s really good. And no I’m not on drugs the wombat talks! Go check it out now!!!” Then they turn away and continue talking about football or some such silly topic. Purple Belly Wombat heathens.
Er. Digger for pre-teens? We’ve got exile and child abuse and spouse abuse and cannibalism and premeditated murders and two vicious flavors of dead-god cult and implied Viagra and a demon hatched from a corpse and, well, I guess SOME kids would be okay … I dunno. I’m not a parent. Seems a bit risky to me, though.
I think Digger would be okay for kids, but only with a much larger dose of Parental Guidance than most kids ever get. Digger is awesome, but as Madam Atom pointed out there are a lot of things here that would require careful explanations for kids.
A viable alternative would be The Dreamland Chronicles by Scott Christian Sava, which is totally different from Digger but has great CGI artwork, an excellent storyline, and is designed from the ground up to be kid friendly (while still able to hold an adult audience as well).
Normally, when someone in a story says “You first.” It’s either because they’re scared or because they’re already being chased and the character saying it is intending to stay behind to slow the pursuers down. It’s refreshing to see Digger do it for sensible reasons.
Also, regarding the Dreamland Chronicles: Wow. When I read ‘CGI’ I thought, ‘Oh, not another Poser comic’. But that actually looks pretty good. Nice to see a CGI webcomic done well.
@TekServer: Fair enough; again, Not A Parent. For me, parental supervision meant they’d thoroughly hidden anything they didn’t want me getting hold of. (This was a lot easier when I was a kid: pre-cable TV, never mind household Internet.) On the plus side, no one ever told me “Oh, you can’t read that.” On the minus side, sometimes they missed something; I’m told that at age 4, I came into the kitchen clutching a copy of Reader’s Digest and demanded to know what “chastity” meant–and an awful lot of my practical sex-ed came from Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine. š
@Madam Atom and @TekServer parental supervision is key to anything that you expose your kid to. I forget that some parents might just toss their kid in front of a cartoon program without checking it out first. You are right Madam Atom their are some darker themes running through the series that should be thought of before presenting them to a younger audience..
I think we’re all pretty much in agreement here; I just wanted to add that my definition of “Parental Guidance” is not prescreening and censoring. Rather, I believe it should involve reading/watching with the child (after prescreening, of course), with a finger on the pause button (so to speak), ready to explain or discuss the more delicate issues in a way that’s educational and matter of fact but not scary. (Well, not too scary, anyway; some of the child endangerment stuff behind Murai’s story just can’t be made un-scary for a kid, and probably shouldn’t.)
@Madam Atom, @Duck Whisperer and of course @ TekServer, the Right Honourable Member for… where ever the Hell TekServer lives, thatās about the same definition of “Parental Guidance” my dad used to use. However, he did not believe in mollycoddling children or preventing them from learning about death. partly this may have been due the multiple family bereavements, but I also thinks it’s something about my generation: When I was a young sprog in he very late 80’s and early to mid 90’s the definition of what was acceptable on kids TV seemed WILDLY different from today. As an example of the lighter, joker side of things, there was the sheer smut that somehow slipped past the censors. Animaniacs alone would break most attempts at censorship today. But mainly, as many things do, it came down to death.
Perhaps this is only true for British kids of my age, but If I remember correctly all the childrenās film, tv and books of the early 90ās and very late 80ās were full of death. Watership Down was on every other weekend, Secret of Nimh showed regularly (the air vent scene still makes me shudder), Bambi was always on re-runs and at the cinema Disney decided to up the ante and kill the main characters parent on-screen in the Lion King whist Don Bluth tried to milk as may tears as was possible out of everything (before he lost it and make rock-a-doodle in a huge shark-jumping moment). British TV for children was, if you ignore the utter terrifying mindf*ck that was the Moomins āLegends of Treasure Islandā, with killer anthro pirates and Richard E Grant as a very cool but quite intimidating vulpine Long John Silver, who in the series not only died, but ended up taking over and excepting from hell to peruse the children who were the main cast. Or there was āAround the World with Willy Fogā which was like around the world in eighty days, but with anthropomorphic animals, and Death. Or something The name of which i forget, but Involved a cute little duckling in a world of borderline sociopathic anthro animals, and death (If anyone knows the name of this please post it: he was in sea-scouts or naval cadets and one point and stummbel4ed onto some evil plan, so they locked him in a cell at the bottom of the ship and it started filling with water. He also spent a disproportionate amount of time trapped down wells with no hope of rescue). The Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon (the good one, not the other one: the one with the cyberpunk dystopia ), Noahās Island (Basically Animals of Farthing Wood lite, same cast, same studio but with deaths toned down to one per arch, and with no on screen gore) And then came the King of them all: Animals Of Farthing Wood.
Dear. Sweet. Jesus. No Brit of my generation can here that tile and not remember the deaths. Especially with Mrs Mouseās litter and the Shrike and the bush… Arrrg. I can still, without any effort, list the deaths in exact order. The newts (burnt alive off-screen), Mrs Pheasant (shot dead off-screen, but we later see her plucked and roasted), Mr Pheasant (Killed onscreen after heartbreakingly seeing his Mateās carcass), Fox (not really dead, but we didnāt know that until the start of the next episode and the others thought him drowned over a waterfall for ages, and he was the best admit!). … no. Down that path madness lies….
[in hind sight it was probably a forgone conclusion that Iād end up a borderline Furry and in a career that involves exhuming human remains, but hey, Iām happy orbiting furry fandom like a comment-crazed comet , and happy as an osteoarchaeologist]
And then the Books. Watership Down and Animals of Farthing Wood again. Charlottes Web. Dick King Smith and Roald Dahl , each tallying at least one horrific death played for comedy per book, guaranteed. Redwall (cute little animals killing each other in various horrific yet-cool ways with Big badass weaponry), Animorphs (donāt want your kids to see āāRed Dawnāā because itās too violent? Donāt worry! Weāve got whatās basically the same thing, but with alien possession, cannibalism, body horror as people transform though various hideous shapes, torture, sexually charged stokehold syndrome after said torture, dismemberment, vigilante killings, MORE violence, and [spoiler] were not going to let the child solders all die gloriously onscreen, weāre going to show what happens to real child soldiers: they either sacrifice themselves from something that is found immediately afterwards to be utterly unnecessary, or live and end up as unbalanced headaches utterly unable to cope in normal society and too severely broken to be sympathetic without also being slightly repellent on some level.). And I loved It all. I think we all did. Nothing of the watered down kids TV for today compares (although I have found a few good books nominally aimed at kids that donāt immediately give me diabetes of the brain, and Pixar at least still has the integrity to treat Children as People rather than as easily distracted puppies)
Parental Guidance is importance, but frankly, when I was a child dad tried to stop me watching Animals of Farthing Wood because it made me cry. I then argued the point, perfectly logically, that it was my decision weather to cry or not. I didnāt have nightmares or loose sleep, quite the reverse, and the story was so good and the happy bits SO happy, it was worth the tears. So he watched it with me, and he let me cry. And I still maintain it was good for me. Now THATS Parental Guidance. Digger will be the least of my kids problems if and when I have any: Iām giving them Watership Down at age 10, The hobbit at 11, His Dark Materials at 12 , Lord of the Rings at 13 and Duncton āSanity-destroyingā Wood at 14 and they will read them to me.
*hugs BunnyRock* I may not be british, but a lot of these were my childhood too. (Farthing Wood tops the list, of course. (And I still think all children and most definitely all grownups should watch it.) It was also the show I loved the most, although Noah’s Island had that wonderful Sasha, which I now only remember as a shrew although I think it might have been a ant-eater. That’s my memory for you.) Thank you for this trip down the nostalgia-line.
I’m afraid I don’t remember a duckling naval cadet, though. There was a pink elephant and a scarecrow and a flying pig that got stuck on a sunken pirate ship, and there might have been death, but that’s still something else entirely. It also makes me think of Amy’s Eyes, which is one of my favourite books for children and includes both ducks and sinking ships, but no wells. And the duck was the antagonist, not the protagonist. Or one of them, anyway.
Also, if you thought Moomins were f*ucked up, well, let me ask you… Did you see only the japanese version? Because that is very, very watered down. For one thing it doesn’t have the death of the vain little squirrel with the beautiful tail, which Little My later wanted to make into a scarf. Which has since made me think of her as somewhat related to the Skins, although she’s more practical and less reliogious-like, and I don’t think she cares much about purple. On the other hand, the japanese version doesn’t explain the Groke’s sad back story, but leaves her as the most terrifying monster ever to hunt children’s dreams. But I’m not really sure if that’s a bad thing or not. Even with a sad backstory, the Groke is still seriously scary. And I still love her, but I also think the Hattifnatters are something of the cutest things invented pre-shadowchild, so apparently I don’t count. *shifty eyes*
Back to Farthing Wood, I think I had it worse when someone were trapped than when they actually died. My worst memory is possibly of the fox-trap, which I still hate fervently. Death is OK; there’s always Nangijala (not about suicide, gorramit! *shifty eyes*), but being trapped, lost, hurt, and possibly slowly dying on top of it, now that’s just evil.
And I’m with you, BunnyRock, parental guidance should be guidance, not extreme cushioning. I think a lot of children (and their parents, for that matter!) could enjoy and benefit from reading digger, preferably, I think, in book-form with their parents. Maybe when they got older and wanted to re-visit their childhood love they could come here and read it all in its digital glory, with the comment section as added spices… ^_^
Anddd…. cut back to Digger.
Very much in sensible mood. š
Especially since Ed doesn’t have an armor-plated butt.
And because you, Ed, have the crowbar with which to free your tribes ancient god from bondage. So being first will let you hop down onto that divine heart and get to work. Good Luck ED:)
I like how she’s holding her pick when she says that. “Well, you can go first, or you can fight. Your choice, really. Take all the time you need to help you decide, I’ll be right here.”
Ed:…*image of Ed fades in a rush of displaced air*
Digger: ! What the…?
Ed: *30 meters further in* Digger Mousie had best catch up!
Good call, Helriz The Kitsune.
Go vote, everyone!
http://topwebcomics.com/vote/10180/default.aspx
Indeed on the good call.
Also, while sensible (of course!) and all that, it’s also kind of sweet how Digger is thinking of others before herself, even now in the face of liver-shriveling danger.
Thinking of herself, Hawk? Partly, I think; and partly, she may be wishing for someone to come in after us. A good fight might be a little cathartic to her right now.
That ledge is too narrow to get in a good pickax swing. Digger is reverting to her basic instincts and relying on her rear armor and claws.
silly digger assuming they can’t fly
I realize how practical Digger’s reason is, but I think a small part of her doesn’t like heights, and needs to see someone show her it’s not so scary.
Ed is being somewhat fearful perhaps? I’m so glad Digger can plan!
I’m sure all of you can relate to this, but I consider each new Digger comic page to be a special gift that day… It perks me up for a while.
THANK YOU!!!
“… and though you know I love you, Ed, I do NOT trust your ability to do anything violent while perched on a ledge barely wide enough to stand on, whereas I’ve been swinging a pickaxe from a scaffold since before I could talk.”
On the other hand, Digger is the one most likely to know what will need to be done to loosen the chains, or whatever else…
“And since this is, of course, an immensely frustrating and nerve-wracking moment for the narrative suddenly to switch tracks again, that is precisely what the narrative will now do.” –Douglas Adams
Yes, but Ed has the crowbar with which the chains can likely be loosened.
@Helriz The Kitsune says: You soooo called it yesterday.
Heh. Little Mother of Earthquakes, protecting the male just like a fierce hunter should! …of course, then Ed and his crowbar get to deal with the heart.
Batman and Robin, Han Solo and Chewbacca, Starsky and Hutch, Digger and Ed.
gulp…
@Duck Whisperer Digger would totally shoot first.
Digger is such a saint! Even with everything she’s gone through she still thinks of others ahead of herself.
That is the most sensible reason I’ve ever heard for having someone else go first. š
Practical and brave. That’s our Digger!
I totally got to preach the Gospel according to Digger today. Okay, that was a little too far. I got to share about Ursula Vernon’s art. A lady I work with happend to look over my shoulder during a break. She noticed me reading Digger and wanted to know if the tales of the Wombat was good for her pre teen. I said “Why sure mamm.” I also plugged the Danny Dragonbreath books.
Usually, I’ll tell a person, “There’s this really cool story about a talking wombat and…” And then I watch them change the subject. I’m like “Wait, wait, no it’s really good. And no I’m not on drugs the wombat talks! Go check it out now!!!” Then they turn away and continue talking about football or some such silly topic. Purple Belly Wombat heathens.
It is 6 AM and I just read through the entire archive in a single sitting. I’m a bit disappointed the comic isn’t finished yet.
Er. Digger for pre-teens? We’ve got exile and child abuse and spouse abuse and cannibalism and premeditated murders and two vicious flavors of dead-god cult and implied Viagra and a demon hatched from a corpse and, well, I guess SOME kids would be okay … I dunno. I’m not a parent. Seems a bit risky to me, though.
I think Digger would be okay for kids, but only with a much larger dose of Parental Guidance than most kids ever get. Digger is awesome, but as Madam Atom pointed out there are a lot of things here that would require careful explanations for kids.
A viable alternative would be The Dreamland Chronicles by Scott Christian Sava, which is totally different from Digger but has great CGI artwork, an excellent storyline, and is designed from the ground up to be kid friendly (while still able to hold an adult audience as well).
Normally, when someone in a story says “You first.” It’s either because they’re scared or because they’re already being chased and the character saying it is intending to stay behind to slow the pursuers down. It’s refreshing to see Digger do it for sensible reasons.
Also, regarding the Dreamland Chronicles: Wow. When I read ‘CGI’ I thought, ‘Oh, not another Poser comic’. But that actually looks pretty good. Nice to see a CGI webcomic done well.
@TekServer: Fair enough; again, Not A Parent. For me, parental supervision meant they’d thoroughly hidden anything they didn’t want me getting hold of. (This was a lot easier when I was a kid: pre-cable TV, never mind household Internet.) On the plus side, no one ever told me “Oh, you can’t read that.” On the minus side, sometimes they missed something; I’m told that at age 4, I came into the kitchen clutching a copy of Reader’s Digest and demanded to know what “chastity” meant–and an awful lot of my practical sex-ed came from Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine. š
@Madam Atom and @TekServer parental supervision is key to anything that you expose your kid to. I forget that some parents might just toss their kid in front of a cartoon program without checking it out first. You are right Madam Atom their are some darker themes running through the series that should be thought of before presenting them to a younger audience..
<3 Digger….
dah!!! i’m caught up!! ***waits impatiently, attempting to distract himself with a slinky***
I think we’re all pretty much in agreement here; I just wanted to add that my definition of “Parental Guidance” is not prescreening and censoring. Rather, I believe it should involve reading/watching with the child (after prescreening, of course), with a finger on the pause button (so to speak), ready to explain or discuss the more delicate issues in a way that’s educational and matter of fact but not scary. (Well, not too scary, anyway; some of the child endangerment stuff behind Murai’s story just can’t be made un-scary for a kid, and probably shouldn’t.)
[Steps down, hands soap box to next speaker … ]
[steps up. slips on soap. falls off. beaks neck. tires again]
@Madam Atom, @Duck Whisperer and of course @ TekServer, the Right Honourable Member for… where ever the Hell TekServer lives, thatās about the same definition of “Parental Guidance” my dad used to use. However, he did not believe in mollycoddling children or preventing them from learning about death. partly this may have been due the multiple family bereavements, but I also thinks it’s something about my generation: When I was a young sprog in he very late 80’s and early to mid 90’s the definition of what was acceptable on kids TV seemed WILDLY different from today. As an example of the lighter, joker side of things, there was the sheer smut that somehow slipped past the censors. Animaniacs alone would break most attempts at censorship today. But mainly, as many things do, it came down to death.
Perhaps this is only true for British kids of my age, but If I remember correctly all the childrenās film, tv and books of the early 90ās and very late 80ās were full of death. Watership Down was on every other weekend, Secret of Nimh showed regularly (the air vent scene still makes me shudder), Bambi was always on re-runs and at the cinema Disney decided to up the ante and kill the main characters parent on-screen in the Lion King whist Don Bluth tried to milk as may tears as was possible out of everything (before he lost it and make rock-a-doodle in a huge shark-jumping moment). British TV for children was, if you ignore the utter terrifying mindf*ck that was the Moomins āLegends of Treasure Islandā, with killer anthro pirates and Richard E Grant as a very cool but quite intimidating vulpine Long John Silver, who in the series not only died, but ended up taking over and excepting from hell to peruse the children who were the main cast. Or there was āAround the World with Willy Fogā which was like around the world in eighty days, but with anthropomorphic animals, and Death. Or something The name of which i forget, but Involved a cute little duckling in a world of borderline sociopathic anthro animals, and death (If anyone knows the name of this please post it: he was in sea-scouts or naval cadets and one point and stummbel4ed onto some evil plan, so they locked him in a cell at the bottom of the ship and it started filling with water. He also spent a disproportionate amount of time trapped down wells with no hope of rescue). The Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon (the good one, not the other one: the one with the cyberpunk dystopia ), Noahās Island (Basically Animals of Farthing Wood lite, same cast, same studio but with deaths toned down to one per arch, and with no on screen gore) And then came the King of them all: Animals Of Farthing Wood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Animals_of_Farthing_Wood_%28TV_series%29
Dear. Sweet. Jesus. No Brit of my generation can here that tile and not remember the deaths. Especially with Mrs Mouseās litter and the Shrike and the bush… Arrrg. I can still, without any effort, list the deaths in exact order. The newts (burnt alive off-screen), Mrs Pheasant (shot dead off-screen, but we later see her plucked and roasted), Mr Pheasant (Killed onscreen after heartbreakingly seeing his Mateās carcass), Fox (not really dead, but we didnāt know that until the start of the next episode and the others thought him drowned over a waterfall for ages, and he was the best admit!). … no. Down that path madness lies….
[in hind sight it was probably a forgone conclusion that Iād end up a borderline Furry and in a career that involves exhuming human remains, but hey, Iām happy orbiting furry fandom like a comment-crazed comet , and happy as an osteoarchaeologist]
And then the Books. Watership Down and Animals of Farthing Wood again. Charlottes Web. Dick King Smith and Roald Dahl , each tallying at least one horrific death played for comedy per book, guaranteed. Redwall (cute little animals killing each other in various horrific yet-cool ways with Big badass weaponry), Animorphs (donāt want your kids to see āāRed Dawnāā because itās too violent? Donāt worry! Weāve got whatās basically the same thing, but with alien possession, cannibalism, body horror as people transform though various hideous shapes, torture, sexually charged stokehold syndrome after said torture, dismemberment, vigilante killings, MORE violence, and [spoiler] were not going to let the child solders all die gloriously onscreen, weāre going to show what happens to real child soldiers: they either sacrifice themselves from something that is found immediately afterwards to be utterly unnecessary, or live and end up as unbalanced headaches utterly unable to cope in normal society and too severely broken to be sympathetic without also being slightly repellent on some level.). And I loved It all. I think we all did. Nothing of the watered down kids TV for today compares (although I have found a few good books nominally aimed at kids that donāt immediately give me diabetes of the brain, and Pixar at least still has the integrity to treat Children as People rather than as easily distracted puppies)
Parental Guidance is importance, but frankly, when I was a child dad tried to stop me watching Animals of Farthing Wood because it made me cry. I then argued the point, perfectly logically, that it was my decision weather to cry or not. I didnāt have nightmares or loose sleep, quite the reverse, and the story was so good and the happy bits SO happy, it was worth the tears. So he watched it with me, and he let me cry. And I still maintain it was good for me. Now THATS Parental Guidance. Digger will be the least of my kids problems if and when I have any: Iām giving them Watership Down at age 10, The hobbit at 11, His Dark Materials at 12 , Lord of the Rings at 13 and Duncton āSanity-destroyingā Wood at 14 and they will read them to me.
*hugs BunnyRock* I may not be british, but a lot of these were my childhood too. (Farthing Wood tops the list, of course. (And I still think all children and most definitely all grownups should watch it.) It was also the show I loved the most, although Noah’s Island had that wonderful Sasha, which I now only remember as a shrew although I think it might have been a ant-eater. That’s my memory for you.) Thank you for this trip down the nostalgia-line.
I’m afraid I don’t remember a duckling naval cadet, though. There was a pink elephant and a scarecrow and a flying pig that got stuck on a sunken pirate ship, and there might have been death, but that’s still something else entirely. It also makes me think of Amy’s Eyes, which is one of my favourite books for children and includes both ducks and sinking ships, but no wells. And the duck was the antagonist, not the protagonist. Or one of them, anyway.
Also, if you thought Moomins were f*ucked up, well, let me ask you… Did you see only the japanese version? Because that is very, very watered down. For one thing it doesn’t have the death of the vain little squirrel with the beautiful tail, which Little My later wanted to make into a scarf. Which has since made me think of her as somewhat related to the Skins, although she’s more practical and less reliogious-like, and I don’t think she cares much about purple. On the other hand, the japanese version doesn’t explain the Groke’s sad back story, but leaves her as the most terrifying monster ever to hunt children’s dreams. But I’m not really sure if that’s a bad thing or not. Even with a sad backstory, the Groke is still seriously scary. And I still love her, but I also think the Hattifnatters are something of the cutest things invented pre-shadowchild, so apparently I don’t count. *shifty eyes*
Back to Farthing Wood, I think I had it worse when someone were trapped than when they actually died. My worst memory is possibly of the fox-trap, which I still hate fervently. Death is OK; there’s always Nangijala (not about suicide, gorramit! *shifty eyes*), but being trapped, lost, hurt, and possibly slowly dying on top of it, now that’s just evil.
And I’m with you, BunnyRock, parental guidance should be guidance, not extreme cushioning. I think a lot of children (and their parents, for that matter!) could enjoy and benefit from reading digger, preferably, I think, in book-form with their parents. Maybe when they got older and wanted to re-visit their childhood love they could come here and read it all in its digital glory, with the comment section as added spices… ^_^