The First Journey of Agatha Heterodyne: Book One: Agatha Heterodyne and the Beetleburg Clank

I don't know how deep the rabbit hole goes on this one, as I haven't read all the way to the end, but I'll put a flag in here. This series is magnificent. For adults and teens alike. Girl Genius was steampunk before it was cool, which means WAY before it became passé. The plots, the ideas, the relationships, the insane scenarios, the madcap action and, damn it, the humor-- why don't more authors take a stab at humor? Sure, it's hard, but when you hit it, you've accomplished alchemy!-- it all works and I wish there was more, more, more, always more. BTW, the novelization of the graphic novel, in which text dominates, did not work for me. Stick with the comics. Edit: Yes, this graphic novel falls into the "make all bodies, male and show more female, of ridiculous proportions! And occasionally flash some underwear!" problem of comic books. I land on the left in that debate, but I have to forgive the Foglios. This work is just too good. One could do far worse than choose Agatha as a role model. She solves her own problems, and that is rare enough in a female character in any work of fiction in any genre that I give the fantasy-stereotype-gender-characteristic-exaggeration-art decisions a free pass. show less

I've been reading Girl Genius for about ten years and, I have to say, it only gets better. Not only is the gaslamp fantasy world consistently engaging and surprising, but the story as it stands in November 2020 is expansively empathetic. It interrogates the intersection between being in a powerful ingroup (here represented as humans) and being worthy of empathy by refusing to explicitly classify clanks, constructs, and other spark-created beings’ level of earned empathy except for through Agatha’s deconstruction of other sparks’ anti-construct prejudices. It's hilarious and the art is beautiful and Zeetha and Krosp always leave me smiling.

GIRL GENIUS: ADVENTURE! ROMANCE! MAD SCIENCE!

I've been reading GG since I ran across the first published volume about fifteen years ago and, with some breaks, I'm still reading updates as the decades-long mad science steampunk drama is published online three times a week. It feels weird to rate something so formative and so personal so low, but the truth is that it is so long, it isn't finished yet, and it would be frustrating to start reading now that it's about 20 volumes, coming out page by page. GG has a fantastically intricate plotline that doesn't really lend itself to the casual reading of something that has to come out slowly, piece by piece, over the course of years.

I won't bother getting into personal nitpicks, as almost all show more of them are just matters of personal taste. I will say this: I have been on tetherhooks about various romantic entanglements in GG for over a decade and I am on those same tetherhooks today, as I write this in 2021, wondering what it means that Agatha will be sailing with Martellus while both of her prospective suitors are sent to war far away in Europa. show less

I've read Girl Genius Online, and liked it, but had some difficulty with following the story from a computer screen. In this first volume, you get Agatha, a young lady at work in the lab of a scientist in a steam punk Europe. Apparently, in this world, there are geniuses, someone with the spark to make incredibly complex machines. Volume one is only an introduction into Agatha's World,, and you are shown bits of pieces of how it works, but its not enough to give you the whole picture. I think someone starting with just this volume will probably have a hard time understanding the world. Also, while the graphic novel is drawn with lots of detail, the action and characters tend to get lost in the background. I think this improves in later show more volumes. show less

Girl Genius is the creation of Phil and Kaja Foglio, a demented artist/writer team responsible for reimaginings of Angel and the Ape and Stanly and his Monster, and the amazing Buck Godot comics. They launched the Girl Genius comic in 2001, in monochrome, but it quickly went color. After each chapter was finished, the comics would be reprinted together as a graphic novel. The comic’s popularity really took off after the Foglio’s started putting them up a page at a time on their website for everyone to read, and now thousands follow Agatha’s adventures online and grab the lavashly produced graphic novels as they become available. Each book, in a nod to traditional pulp-fiction adventure, is titled "Agatha Heterodyne and the (fill show more in the blank)."

But who is Agatha? Agatha is a “spark,” or mad-girl, or as we would call her, a Mad Scientist in a steampunk world where the scientific revolution escalated to all-out war. The world is ruled by science, and it’s not ruled very well. In a nod to tradition, she starts off as an inept lab-assistant, but turns out to be the secret heir of the vanished Heterodynes–one of the oldest and sparkiest dynasties of Europa. Agatha is a sweet girl with a tendancy for making death-rays, but she quickly finds herself caught up in adventures that take her all across Europa, from Wulfenbach’s floating castle Castle Wulfenbach to… well, eventually to everywhere. Probably even the lost Americas.

The Foglio’s artwork is gorgeous, but their humor is the series’ true treasure. Fans of TerryPratchett’s Diskworld books would feel right at home here, and the Foglio’s are masters of both visual and verbal humor. Just one example page: And if that doesn’t peak your interest, you have no soul. So go check out Girl Genius, one of the most successful webcomics (it has even spawned its own fan-created wiki) and graphic-novel serials around. The best part is you can read it from beginning to end online; the worst part is you won’t be happy till the full collection is sitting on your bookshelf, ready to embarrass you when your friends come over. show less

Top-Notch Mad Science: This is the first volume in Phil Foglio's ongoing series featuring Agatha Heterodyne and a cast of hundreds. The book collects the first few issues of what was originally a comic book series. The publishing schedule, though, seems to have been troubled for a variety of reasons, and "Girl Genius" now appears in webcomic form (with ensuing regular compilations in print form).

Kaja Foglio, wife and co-creator, describes this as "gaslamp fantasy": crypto-Victorian science and pre-pulp adventures in a world filled with mad scientists, giant steam-powered robots, weird technology, mysterious cults, and cackling villains. A great deal of which is played for laughs, simultaneously embracing and sending up the usual show more tropes of the genre. The humor throughout balances between sly drollery and slapstick.

One of the major attractions is Foglio's art, which many gamers will well know from his years of penning the "Phil & Dixie" feature in "Dragon" magazine. It's drenched in color and is highly detailed, to the point that you wonder how he ever completes a page. There's almost always 18 different things going on in the background, none of which is ever really relevant, but Foglio apparently really enjoys jamming in the sight gags.

I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff, and the Foglios have done a great job in creating an internally consistent alterna-Earth with its own physical and magical laws and history and politics, and they've also introduced seemingly dozens of plot strands. This latter is both good and bad. In later issues, there is some loss of cohesiveness, and the story seems to wander off into side treks, and none of the storylines ever seem to get wrapped up. (It's sort of the "Lost" of the comics world.)

On the other hand, it's got enormous fleets of dirigibles! And scar-faced pseudo-Teutonic bad guys! And talking cats! And endangered heroines in corsets! So, you know, all of the good stuff. Check it out! show less

Fun, inventive, with cool steampunk art - but also confusing. I was not a fan of Agatha's oversexualized character design - wasn't she supposed to be smart and nerdy?