Graveyard Quest

Originally published as part of Green’s Gunshow webcomic, this story follows a tormented gravedigger’s journey toward letting go of the past and finding reasons to keep living—and digging. Green’s ghoulish gravedigger has the sickly pallor, hollow eyes, and nasal cavity of a skeleton, and he’s being haunted by the ghost of his father, who offers helpful advice like, “Graves could hold more bones if you dug less like an asshole.” The gravedigger’s anger toward his father only intensifies when the ghost makes off with his late wife’s bones, which the gravedigger had been keeping in his house. What follows is a strange, painful subterranean trip to hell and back involving gelatinous bandits, a mole companion with sage advice, a town of worms, and the exorcising of literal and figurative demons. Green injects plenty of dark humor and cartoon violence into the story (corpses pile up in the gravedigger’s absence, along with pleading notes from the police), but simmering emotional anguish is never far from the surface. Green seems keenly aware of the unresolved resentments that many teenagers (and adults) have toward their parents. Ages 13–up. (Mar.)