 COMICS |  | WEBCOMIC OF THE WEEK: JULY 7 | | A look at the comics you should be reading this side of the internet! This week: Robots and Ninjas and Air Pirates, Oh My! | | | By Steve Sunu and Anne McNally | | Posted 7/07/2008 | |  | |  [EDITOR'S NOTE: Welcome to Webcomic of the Week, where we strive to bring you some of the best standout webcomics out there on the world wide internet! Be it fantasy, humor or something else entirely, every Monday we'll bring you two of the best reasons to turn on your computer in the morning!]
This Week:
Girl Genius
by Phil and Kaja Foglio
Updates: Monday – Wednesday – Friday
Kicking off this inaugural session of WotW is the critically acclaimed comic-turned-webcomic Girl Genius by Phil and Kaja Foglio. Set in a "gaslamp fantasy" universe where fantastic devices are constructed by mechanically adept humans known as "Sparks," Girl Genius follows the adventures of Agatha Heterodyne across the world to reclaim her birthright as the heir to the legacy of the world's greatest Sparks, Bill and Barry Heterodyne. With a compelling, heartfelt storyline, top-notch character development and absolutely gorgeous art, Girl Genius stands a cut above other webcomics as the pinnacle of universe development.
The webcomic has a little bit of everything: robots, humor, monsters with accents, warrior princesses, unexpected twists and a talking cat with a monarch complex. If you enjoy long form comics with an overarching story rather than an episodic feel (think Y: The Last Man or "Lord of the Rings") and you've got a healthy taste for technology and Victorian settings, then this is the comic for you. It updates with new content every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Wizard was able to speak with creator Phil Foglio to get a glimpse of the inspiration and work that went into creating Girl Genius, what's in store for Agatha, her continuing adventures, and the fate of the world. | | 
WIZARD UNIVERSE: Girl Genius is a unique webcomic in that it was a print comic first and then transitioned over to the web.
PHIL FOGLIO: That is absolutely correct. We were the first ones to do that.
Why did you decide to transition over to webcomics?
FOGLIO: Well, a couple of reasons. For a long time, people would come up and they'd mention that they'd like to get started in the cartooning thing, and if we had any advice. For a couple of years, we'd been telling them to just put their stuff up on the web because it's very easy, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper. After a couple of years of giving this fine advice, we wondered why we weren't taking it! There were other reasons—it was an interesting new medium and we wanted to expand in that direction. I thought that traditional comics were more of a declining industry whereas the web is certainly much more up and coming.
Girl Genius doesn't really fit into any pre-determined comic genre, and the comic has coined the phrase "Gaslamp Fantasy" to describe itself.
FOGLIO: Yes! Kaja came up with that. She thought she was quoting something else, but then when she went to look it up, she realized, "Oh, no, I misremembered! I made this up all by myself!" And enough other people like it that it caught on. The closest thing is steampunk, which is very big right now, but it's not exactly the same. We have no punks. [Laughs]
How were you inspired to create the universe of Girl Genius?
FOGLIO: Originally when we were working on the concept back in '93, it was going to be contemporary and it just really wasn't gelling. We liked the core characters and we liked a lot of the stuff we had, but it didn't have any snap. Kaja was going through a bunch of my old sketchbooks and she found all of this Victorian mad scientist kind of stuff and she said, "You obviously enjoy drawing this kind of thing and all of your other previous projects, like Buck Godot and MythAdventures (which we just reprinted, by the way), have never really had a chance to use it, so why don't we do it with this?" Besides, Victorian and mad scientists! They kind of go together like crackers and cheese! Lots and lots of cheese. That was what did it, it was one of those things where you hear it and you say, "Yes! This is obvious, why didn't we think of it before?"
What do you have in store for the future of the comic?
FOGLIO: We've got it worked out, we know what happens. I'll say that the story is about halfway through. We're coming up to what we refer to as a "save point." If we wanted to go off and be shepherds somewhere, that's it—the story could stand by itself. But we really don't have any plans to do that.
What other projects are you working on?
FOGLIO: I've got another MythAdventure novel by the late Robert Asprin and Jodie Lynn Nye that I'm doing a cover for. At the moment that's really the big thing. There's a book of science fiction short stories that are getting illustrated by a bunch of webcomic artists, but I've just committed to that, I don't even know the title of it yet. David Malki over at Wondermark is putting that together. No, not a lot. There's just so much to be done with Girl Genius.
What's something that you would like to say to people who are just starting out reading Girl Genius? And who would like it?
FOGLIO: Don't take it seriously. We really can't give a defining demographic for Girl Genius. We have people of all ages and all walks of life who love it. We have grandparents who are using it to teach their grandkids to read and everybody in between. It's a work that I'm very pleased with because of the nature of the female protagonist. We've been doing this for about 8 years and have really had a chance to evolve the character properly. A lot of comics really don't have that space to breathe and thus your character either has to endure these shortcuts to becoming the final character you want them to be, or they spring fully formed from the head of Zeus and you don't really get a chance to empathize with their growth process.
One of our overwhelming rules here at Studio Foglio is that what we're making has to be entertaining to us while we're making it, and that seems to be something that we do well and a lot of people like it. It's not for everybody, of course, but we do our best.
Check out Girl Genius here!
Webcomic of the Week continues! Click here for our rundown of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja! | | | | | | | |
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