Girl Genius

A magnificent steamworks & magick opus.

Factography

Author: Kaja and Phil Foglio
Started: 21.2.2005
Updates: Weekly (Monday, Wednesday, Friday)
Website: www.girlgeniusonline.com

Words

The official tagline is "Adventure, romance, mad science!", and it describes the world of Girl Genius perfectly. This is the world where the industrial revolution went really wrong, and in the hands of mad scientists endowed with abilities far beyond those of ordinary people brought total war. Twice it was settled: The first time by the descendants of the extremely gifted and no-less insane Heterodyne lineage, Bill and Barry Heterodyne. When they mysteriously disappeared, the conflicts broke out again, as severe as never before. The second time, the man who brought the peace didn't follow the Heterodyne way of charisma and diplomacy. In a rather Top Gear way, he applied power and - when necessary - more power. His military force was superior to anyone else's, and thus the peace was brought once again. Far from stable, far from spontaneous, but as long as all the big players fear the Baron, it might work.

Amidst all of this, Agatha Clay, a clumsy university assistant, becomes an unlikely hero. As if getting robbed, fired and stripped of illusions wasn't bad enough, she also learns that she's of the Heterodyne bloodline. Not only the Baron might want to eliminate her, if he ever finds out. And he will.

Phil Foglio is one of my favorite Magic: the Gathering illustrators, so there's no way I could not love the artwork he created for Girl Genius. The diversity of the characters is amazing, the colossal imagination beyond all the machinery is breathtaking, the fancifulness of the J�germonsters matched only by their language is stunning, the architectonic monumentality of the Castle Heterodyne is a-stone-ishing, and I'm out of superlatives :-)

Recommended listening: Arcanum soundtrack.

More than words

Merchandise

Nine volumes, multiple reprints. Thankfully, as otherwise you'd end up paying enormous amount of money to get the older issues. Get some of them directly from Studio Foglio, or all of them from Amazon, which is usually a bit cheaper.

For your convencience...

I got 'em all. What are YOU waiting for? :-)

Miscellaneous

Magic: the Gathering cards illustrated by Phil and Kaja Foglio.