I have been waiting to get to this scene for YEARS. An embarassingly long time. I didn’t always know what was was going to be said, but I knew the ghost scene was somewhere on the horizon. Like Ed’s story and the revelation about the tail of the peacock, it’s been one of the touchstones I used to steer the plot.
Having reached it–well, gang, this is kind of the beginning of the end sequence. I mean, Digger still has a good chunk left to run–I suspect we’re looking at close to another year, if not more, since I always seem to run long (remember that I expected Digger to be less than a hundred pages long once!)–but having reached this scene, we’re definitely barreling towards the climax and picking up speed.
Remember Tunnel 17!
Digger is one of those stories where so wish the protagonist to make it all the way, but at the same time you wish at least as much he/she won’t, cause then you know it’s over and it would be like saying farewell to your very best friend and soul mate and you will never ever see each other again. The worst of farewells.
Hee hee hee.. Gotta love Digger.. Ghost of ancient prophecy comes by to bestow arcane guidance and widom, and she has to grumble about how inefficient it all is…
Beautiful. Awesome. Bawesome?
I love the philosophical discussion about ghosts while the ghost is trying to deliver his/her message.
At once that’s fantastic and terrible to hear. I half hope that a year is a slight underestimate. That’s only about 100 pages more!
“…The path has not been easy. Now you must– um.. You… Uh, Hello? Hello? Ghost of the Past here… C’mon people, I may be Dead, but I don’t have all day!”
Beautiful art. I especially love the fact that they aren’t absolutely riveted by what the ghost is saying. Just another thing that makes these characters unique.
I can’t wait to see what happens because I really can’t fathom what might come next.
I once spoke to Kate Elliott about her Crown of Stars series, which is long and complicated and quite good if you have the brain for it (also good if you don’t, but a lot of side plots will go past you). She said she had started with or gotten very early a scene where one character is working in a mine.
I read that scene and thought it was great to know, because it is in book six or something like that, and these are not slender books.
Love how they’re pretty much ignoring what the ghost has to say.
Can someone refresh my memory about the “tail of the peacock”?
Much like Rhan, I am both pleased and sad that we’ve gotten this far. I love Digger for *not* being all wide-eyed-magic-girl, and I’ll miss her.
ROFLMAO….!!!
AWWWWW!
Ah, I love wombats, always so practicals, even in (un)death. “Some architect stick around to see their building finished” LOL..
Another year? I am going to simply expire by then! I admit, I’m one of those who usually reads the first few pages, then the last few pages, then the rest of the story if I thnk it’s still worth it. Spoilers do not bother me in the least, because if the only reason you finish a story is because you don’t know how it ends–well, that’s a pretty poorly written story. Good writing keeps you involved and reading even when you know how it turns out. (You all know this is true. Why else read something more than once?) So Digger is wonderful, complex, beautiful, satisfying on so many levels, AND IT’S KILLING ME TO NOT KNOW THE ENDING! My husband laughs, of course. He likes to see me thwarted.
you can alway read the book again Delu
and I’m sure they know Murai is listening, so she can tell them anything they missed.
the tail of the peaock, 1st theres this: http://www.diggercomic.com/?p=115
then later this: http://www.diggercomic.com/?p=584
Ghosts, can’t live with ’em…duh, how’s that go again?
D.G.: IIRC, the snail said to beware the tail of the peacock, and it was not clear what it meant until Digger learned to her horror that the mountain over *there* was the peacock’s wife, and that was the peacocks head, and that means we’re standing on…. and the crevasse opens up.
I figure Murai’s listening and the other two figure that’s enough. I admit, I was a little surprised to learn that wombats have any ghosts at all, but it’s sort of charming.
*laughs* The poor ignored ghost. 🙂
Well, presumably Murai is listening in awed and reverent silence (she is the “Child of Prophesy” referred to by the ghost, right?).
But it is funny that Digger and Grim-Eyes, not having any reason to listen to the ghost, *aren’t* listening to the ghost 🙂 .
As a new reader who tore through the archives in a marathon lasting several days– I didn’t *mean* to marathon, but I just couldn’t tear myself away, I fell so in love with everyone– I am also somewhat saddened to hear that the end is in sight, even if still kinda distant.
Only somewhat, because while I will miss the strip after it ends, I trust that it will end with a conclusive resolution for each of these characters who I care about so much, so it will be worth the sadness.
Digger was warned to beware the tail of hte peacock, which turned out be the word for the part of the mountain they were standing on, below a peacock shaped mountain, when they fell in an avalanche.
Re:D.G.
“Beware the tail of the peacock” was one of the slug’s two prophesies – the one “with a verb and everything!” We didn’t find out what the heck it was supposed to mean until the pass known as the Peacock’s Tail gave out. 🙂
Also, I too am both excited and a little sad to hear the comic’s coming toward its end… but I also remember hearing sometime last year that we had about a year left, so who knows. 😉
I will *not* think about Tuesdays and Thursdays without Digger until it happens, dangit! I save Digger for last in my trawl ’cause she’s my favorite.
That said – I love the way she’s.. er.. handling the ghost. hee!
[…] be able to link to any page in the archives now that the strip no longer has a subscription wall. Today’s installment in the inadvertant adventures of everybody’s favorite wombat is both hilarious and […]
There will be an end to Digger? Oh, noooooh! I hoped it would last forever. No chance of shark-jumping when you’re dealing with a wombat.
first: i, too, am waiting for the ghost to say “do you mind??? i’m trying to impart something serious here!”
and i just realized how much i am spoiled by comics. i expect a novel to end – i may not like that it does, if i really love it, but i know going in that there are a finite number of pages. with comics….somehow i expect the adventures just to go on forever. well, they could, couldn’t they? i mean, digger has to get home, and that’s a long way away, and there could be all sorts of things that happen along the way……*sigh*
I absolutely love Digger, and I will be sad once her tale is over, but I can’t pretend to not be excited about the climax of the story and finding out how it ends. I also can’t help but think that even the end will be satisfyingly Ursula-ish.
I actually don’t read this every other week, other wise I’d go crazy sometimes. I love the comic, and am sad to hear that it might be ending, but hey, that’s what re-reads are for! 🙂 and re-re reading, and re-re-re-reading….. etc, ut infinitio quod ultra…:D
I wonder if Grim Eyes is picking up bad habits about ghosts and gods from Digger, or if hyenas just don’t go in much for ghosts, either.
(Oh, D.G.: the little slug said something about the tail of the peacock being dangerous, which was a prophecy with a verb and everything, and then they went onto the snowbank of a mountain that was named, essentially, “peacock,” and they were on its “tail,” and then the snow went flump and dumped Murai and Digger into the crevasse, which got the poor little priestling’s arm broken.
Which goes to show that Digger is correct: prophecies are frequently just another thing to beat yourself up about after they come true.)
I find it ironic that, after reading your comment about this page, (Remember tunnel 17!) I saw that it had 17 comments on it. (until I post of course.)
On the other hand, I definitely want to start buying the books when I have the cash floating around. Awesome series, and it makes me want to start working on my own book more, which is always a good thing.
I think the ghost is a “she.” I just get that feeling. Anyway, I think Murai’s standing there goggling respectfully while her two companions in the peanut gallery make remarks. That’s kind of me and my best friends, too. I’m not a person to watch movies with if you don’t like side-comments.
Oh, Digger. I’d be right there next to you, trying to see if it were possible to lob a pebble through the ghost or maybe figure out its specific gravity (“–is it standing on anything? Maybe an ethereal toehold? No? Floating, really? Okay, but is it vaporous or what? I mean, like smoke or steam or–” **dodges lightning-bolt**)
Happy to here that there is a standing conclusion ot this marvelous tale. Nothing worse than a corpse-story (you know, a tale that has already died but the author keeps it shambling along?)
“Honored Spirit, please excuse my compan–”
“Don’t interrupt while I’m talking to the Earth Mother.”
“…”
T_T I caught up. I wish you could draw as fast as I could read. XD
Lovely page.
And… hey, transprency. I was just about to say the way I was playing with a drawing style was “like Digger but with transparency”…
First of all, thanks for the clarification.
Yeah, it will suck for it to end. However, you can re-read it, which is often more satsfying than the original read-through since you pick up on stuff you didn’t pick up on the first time around. And with respect to skipping ahead: The ending is not the interesting part of a good story. The interesting part is how they get to the ending.
“Well, there’s something you don’t see every day!”
I like that the ghost is all but completely ignored here.
Ha ha ha, You gotta love wombats.
Oh, dear. I better start saving money to buy the printed volumes, I was waiting till it was all finished… of course secretely I hope you’re miscalculating again and we have Digger for a long long time…
Do little wombats in Digger’s family ever deliberately leave dishes in the sink? Like a marsupial equivalent of summoning Bloody Mary?
Probably not. Probably a wombat would think the whole Bloody Mary concept was insane.
“So… if you do this whole thing with the candle and the saying her name three times thing, she appears.”
“Yes!”
“…And kills you.”
“Yes!”
“And kids do this.”
“Yes!”
“………….. Blood and shale WHY?!”
Hm. Blank face, hooded robe, radiant aura…this ghost looks an awful lot like the Good Man’s Mother. I just hope it’s the nice version.
Also, even though this business about a “child of prophecy” dovetails with Murai’s sense of destiny, I can’t help but wonder if she might be talking about someone a little more marsupial.
Picked up the first book (along with _Black Dogs – The House of Diamonds_) at Emerald City Comic Con yesterday. Tore through the book, then came home and looked up the website; stayed up way too late last night, just got caught up – well, just now. SO FABULOUS. I want to hug and snuggle Ed.
1. The ghost is a recording. Someone ran across the trigger, and the ghost recites its message. Think Hari Seldon….
2. I am glad to hear the story will have an end. Not, mind, because I want it to end, but because I don’t want it to simply drag on forever. One of the great things about this strip is that it doesn’t waste my time trying to milk the franchise.
Instead of wanting this story to last forever, I’ll be looking forward to the next story….
Most interesting of all, is *still* don’t know who the ghost is talking to.
Destiny child could be *any* of the three who arrived there.
“Am I a destiny child?”
“No, you are not… Oh well Maybe you are”
Groan!
You mean to say Digger is a finite phenomenon?
I know it’s up to the author, and I don’t mean to press the issue, but I really, really hope Digger keep on rolling for a lot longer. Obviously, the author knows best when to stop, but I hope that Digger gets to go on another adventure… like one to find her home, or one to find the way to find the way home. Well, there still is hope. Maybe the author will just take a vacation? (Please, oh please!)
And now, about this comic:
Is this where someone should say “Have respect for the dead, you numskulls!”
The wombat ghosts sound cool. I really love this comic.
Couldn’t agree more with the majority of the comments about the inevitable finale. While it would be awesome to look forward to an infinite supply of something I love so much, it is a very rare thing for an author to want to continue in the same setting for so long (get tired of it, run out of ideas that are more than filler, have an idea for another world they really want to explore, etc). We all crave closure to some extent, and it means that we can look forward to the next amazing comic brought forth!
I love how they’re having a casual conversation over the ghost’s big speech. Digger is the definition of irreverence. I love it.
My friend recommended this comic to me recently, and before I started I asked her, “Is this going to be a story with a definite end?” I wouldn’t have bothered if it had been the other kind; they’re no fun. Tension exists in a story because it’s leading somewhere; the story goes on because every time you get there, there’s somewhere even bigger to go. But it can’t keep on getting bigger for ever. You have to get to the absolute summit and then wind your way back down. And if that isn’t the final destination — then all the tension, every screw that the author put your emotions through, has all been nothing but a colossal lie.