A bunch more positive response for “Digger” which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and a little startled. I mean, I do way more complicated, visually tasking pieces on a weekly basis, and yet one quick monochrome page of the mostly unscripted adventures of a wombat–who has spent the past two pages discussing the nature of holes, no less–and I get more feedback in one day than for weeks of non-comic art. Not that I object in any way to the praise! I’m delighted and flattered and grateful that people like my comics, I just find it sort of startling that there is so much following for comics in general, above and beyond that of generalized art or writing–I wrote an entire crappy fantasy novel, fer cryin’ out loud, and never got this much response. But combine the two, and wham! It’s like some weird alchemy–one minute you’ve got a chicken and some dynamite and the next you’re scraping giblets off your glasses. (Okay, that’s not really alchemy, but you get my drift.)

Probably this would not be surprising at all, had I read comics as a kid, and grown up hooked, instead of discovering them more or less as an adult, when a friend of mine dumped the collected Sandman and a couple dozen Preachers on me and said “Here, have fun.”

Maybe it’s the whole continuing, identifiable character or persistant world or something. Maybe it’s dialogue. Maybe it’s story. Maybe much better minds than mine have tackled “Why are comics so appealing?” and I should give it up and simply be glad that people like my wombat.

Still, as a certain statue would say, “It is peculiar.”

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