Personal blog - and temporary home page until new website is finished - of writer, editor and graphic artist Christopher Mills


Tuesday, November 18, 2014

The End of GRAVEDIGGER

After about ten years of work, and a year-and-a-half online serialization, the hardboiled crime webcomic by Yours Truly and Rick Burchett, concludes today. That's right - Gravedigger is done.

At least for now.

"Digger" McCrae will probably be back, though. He’s a tough sonuvabitch. I’m already talking to publishers about print editions and digital download versions of both “The Predators” and “The Scavengers,” and I’m hopeful that we’ll be seeing said versions sometime soon.

Rick Burchett and I do hope to complete at least one more Gravedigger comic (tentatively titled “The Marauders”) sometime in the future. First, though, we have a different comics pitch (kinda like Gravedigger, but not) that we’re putting together, and Rick will be inking Joe Staton’s pencils on a new Femme Noir graphic novel that I hope will be finished next year.

Gravedigger has been - and still is - my love letter to old Gold Medal crime pulp paperbacks, 60s and 70s caper films, and all the great Hollywood tough guys. It's been a real pleasure collaborating on it with Rick off and on over the last decade, and I'm grateful that the strip - and its protagonist - seems to have garnered a loyal cadre of fans.

Interestingly, the strip received a very in-depth and thoughtful write-up by Timothy Cramer on his excellent blog just this past week. The Gravedigger comic has gotten a fair number of positive reviews over the years, but I was quite impressed by Cramer's analysis of the storytelling of the strip. It actually makes it look like Rick and I know what we're doing!

In any case, check out the final page of "The Predators" here.

3 comments:

Paul R. McNamee said...

I enjoyed it a lot! So could see Lee Marvin doing such stories!

wordboy said...

Not a genre that I usually read but I liked both the storylines. Lee Marvin would've been perfect for this role.

Anonymous said...

> It actually makes it look like Rick and I know what we're doing!

Well, to quote from the blog post you mention:

"They are details men, and pretty damn good at it."

"“one stylish son-of-a-bitch” [..] this can be said of each of the two creators as well."