Dig This!

Since February of this year, writer Christopher Mills and artist Rick Burchett have been re-running “The Scavengers,” the original episode of their hard-boiled comic series, Gravedigger, on the Web--one page per week, posted every Monday. But today brings the final installment of that story, which you’ll find here. Fans shouldn’t worry, though, for this isn’t the end of Digger McCrae. As Mills reports,

On September 2nd--barring disaster--we’ll be beginning our second caper, “The Predators,” which is brand new and [has] never been seen before in print or online. This one has been in the works for a long time, and I’m looking forward to seeing how people like it. It’s a very different type of tale from “The Scavengers,” with Digger finding himself in some seriously hot water down in steamy South Florida.

If that story proves popular, I’ve got a third caper in mind, tentatively titled “The Marauders,” which both Rick and I are eager to get to.

Meanwhile, Mills notes that this coming Wednesday he will launch a new Femme Noir Web site. “All four issues of the 2009 ‘Dark City Diaries’ miniseries, as well as previously published short stories and online strips,” he says, “will be serialized--for FREE--online, a page a week,” beginning with a serialization of “Blonde Justice,” which features art by Joe Staton and Horacio Ottolini, with colors by Melissa Kaercher. Mills adds: “If you already have these comics in your collection, the online versions will be supplemented with new bonus material (samples of Joe’s pencils, my original script pages, commentary, etc.). The site will also function as a ‘Production Log’ for the new graphic novel--and any other future Femme Noir projects/products.”