Reasons to Love: Girl Genius

I've more or less been in love with Phil Foglio's art since the 80's and he did the art for Myth Adventures, the story of a magician's apprentice who gains the tutilage of a demon. That's the easy way to explain it. There was a multiverse before multiverses were cool.

I went in for the puns. Stayed for the visual comedy. And remembered the name because it was kinda funny. Fast forward years later and I find out that Mr Foglio [aka "Professor Foglio" in fiction] is doing a webcomic. Bonus!

I've been enjoying the Foglio's Gaslamp Fantasy world for literal years, and it's high time I told you lovely readers to go check it out.

Why? Well let me begin with:

The Little Details

Mr Fogio's art is chock full of little details. Like finding "Winslow" [a plush aligator-like... thing] on the pages, or what little critters are doing with each other. Or one of my favourites from the early pages, a fine example of environmental storytelling. Telling a different story than the one going on in the foreground.

On the street the protagonists are walking through, there is a storefront for a place selling "Honking Classes", replete with a stairway bearing, "You. Can. Do. It!" written with each word on the stair risers. On either side, the neighbouring shops have "No honking" signs tacked up.

I find that sort of thing hilarious.

Another bit that I love is that the comic moves from black-and-white to colour in sync with the titular heroine's 'breakthrough' to the 'genius' part of the title.

The Spark

In the Gaslamp fantasy world of Girl Genius, the most dangerous people are 'Sparks'. Mad geniuses that have just as much odds of blowing up the world as they might do to change it. There are family lines of Sparks who have territories, monsters, and minions under their control.

When inventing, a Spark is in "the madness place" where they can warp reality and cross the boundaries between science and magic. Or, as Agatha put it herself, "Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!"

There are cogniscent machines, miniature mammoths [mimmoths], humanoid machines [clanks] and varying abominations of nature that have left their marks on the world. All because of those with the Spark.

Girl Power

The Foglios have successfully written several strong female characters that fill every possible definition thereof except, perhaps the "fighting f*cktoy" that most of Hollywood seems to prefer. Yes, there are some cheesecake shots in the book, but there's some balancing beefcake in there too.

That said, the ladies definitely find their ways to have, gain, and keep power on their own terms. One of the better fighting sequences is between at least three ladies for control of Heterodyne Castle. Little to no male intervention - unless you count the castle itself as a 'he'.

It's complicated.

The Complications

As you might expect with a webcomic that's been going on for a decade or so, the plot... thickens. How the Foglios manage to keep all the moving parts co-ordinated, I do not know. I admire it. I fear doing such myself, mind, so I'm applauding it all the harder.

What starts as one girl's struggle to survive in a world run by literal madmen... evolves into a world-spanning drama that includes god-queens, eldritch beasts, time warping, genetic engineering [no, really] and a struggle for power that also involves fleets of derigibles and a zombie robot BBEG.

Read the comic. You'll see what I'm talking about eventually.

Tell them the InterNutter sent you. That'll make 'em wonder.