Platinum Grit 7

"Drowning With Conviction". Written by Danny Murphy. Art by Trudy Cooper. 32 Pages 1994.

It’s been over 30 years since Oglaf‘s Trudy Cooper & Doug Bayne teamed up with Danny Murphy to create the indie comic book-turned-webcomic Platinum Grit. The series was written and illustrated by Cooper, co-written by Murphy, with Bayne inking and contributing to the scripts through Episode 11.

The series began with an (officially non-canon) entry entitled “Friendly Rivalry” in the 1993 issue of Australia’s Issue One Magazine, followed by 10 issues self-published under the Dead Numbat imprint from 1994-1998.

Episodes 11-20 were released sporadically online from 2000-2009, with updates occasionally reaching nearly George R.R. Martin levels of time between installments (ok, maybe not QUITE), before being put on a permanent hiatus after #20. Additionally—and maddeningly to the archivists among us—though #1-16 eventually received physical reprints in 3 print-on-demand volumes (with #12-16 getting individual releases as well), a fourth and final book collection never materialized, leaving issues #17-20 unavailable in printed form.

To add yet another obstacle, the way that Platinum Grit appeared in its online state was atypical, requiring Shockwave (and then Flash) to scroll through the comic panels one-by-one, which had the unfortunate effect of becoming practically inaccessible once those programs were no longer available.