digandphil

[digandphil]

this is the new home of dig and phil, a comic about two queer stoner bros who work in a mortuary home. also, they’re an armadillo and an elephant seal. 

this project was originally on twitter @ digandphil, but i haven’t updated in over a year. my mission has always been to make a candid, death-positive space, but spring 2020 was marked by thousands dead to COVID-19, with mortuaries overflowing in my home state of NY, along with the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless others at the hands of racist police violence. death was not only everywhere, but it disproportionately affected vulnerable populations: Black, indigenous, low-income, houseless, disabled, and elderly people. death positivity didn’t only feel out-of-touch, but and a reflection of my own privileged positionality. and, honestly, I don’t think anything’s changed.

death positivity, to me, is a cultural attitude in which open and honest conversations are had surrounding the rights of the deceased, their treatment, and their living kin. I think it’s still an important conversation to have, and i’ve always hoped dig and phil’s adventures can start some of that dialogue, especially surrounding commercial death practice. but as time goes on, i realized transparency without agency means very little. whether it’s biopolitical-- who had the right to live, who has the right to die-- or necropolitical -- concerning the rights of the dead themselves-- death positivity needs to identify systems of power in order to truly accomplish what it sets out to do. 

quite frankly, i don’t think dig and phil can do that, nor is it the place to. as the time passed, i realized there was no ‘easy out’-- i couldn’t respectfully approach topics of death and dying and still wrap the comics up with a punchline, nor did I want to make work just about two stoners without the mortuary-workplace-comedy elements. 

for those reasons, and more (notably, dig being a they/them transmasc butch lesbian, an experience i no longer identify with and no longer felt comfortable writing about) the adventures of dig and phil are coming to an end. if my silly little comic taught you something about the funeral industry, neat! but realistically there’s only so much I can do. i’m grateful for the memories and connections this comic has afforded me, and I hope to continue writing and illustrating.