The Comic of the Month for November 2021 is Girl Genius by Phil and Kaja Foglio, inked by Cheyenne Wright. Read it here:
Today’s page
https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php#.YYFcyIFHmhAStart from the beginning:
https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20021104I notice the comic has been running for 19 years this week!
This Comic of the Month is recommended by
Róisín, as well as her husband Star I believe. Róisín aske med to post this to make sure the links work, but she provided the following to present the comic.
So,,with no further ado, please proceed to read and discuss Girl Genius!
GIRL GENIUS
Girl Genius is a webcomic by Phil and Kaja Foglio, inked by Cheyenne Wright. It has been variously described as science fiction, science fantasy, Victorian gothic or gaslamp fantasy, and may well be all of the above. The characters are strange but relatable.
The setting so far is mostly parts of Europa (America has been lost as far as most people know - it may well still be there but is cut off by weirdness down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Britain is still there, but keeps to itself and is ruled by an immortal queen who likes to keep it separate.
The world seems to be post-apocalyptic, though what kind of apocalypse exactly happened has so far not been specified, with much of the surviving population controlled by devices called ‘slaver wasps’ which reduce their hosts to shambling zombie-like creatures which are directed…..or not….. by some of the ‘Sparks’, humans who have a talent for mad science which is so powerful it amounts to a kind of magic. Sparks may be good, neutral or evil, or various combinations thereof, and vary hugely in power level from ‘their machines just work a bit better’ to ‘can create machine intelligences, living buildings, and organic constructs that might as well be people’. Then there is Othar Tryggvasen, a powerful Spark whose life ambition is to wipe out all the other Sparks and then commit suicide. He is an interesting character.
The main story follows Agatha Heterodyne, the Girl Genius of the title, and opens with her being an apprentice and science student at Transylvania Polygnostic University. She believes herself to be the daughter of Adam and Lilith Clay, who run a blacksmith’s shop in a nearby town, and has no idea that her ‘parents’ are Punch and Judy, two powerful constructs whose job is to conceal from the world that their ‘daughter’ is in fact the last survivor of the infamous Heterodyne lineage of Sparks. Events transpire at the University that create a situation which brings Baron Klaus Wulfenbach to investigate a possible incident of a rogue Spark working there. Wulfenbach has been responsible for giving Europa such law and order as it has regained, and really doesn’t like rogue Sparks who may casually tear down such civilisation as he has managed to reconstruct.
In his youth he was a friend and associate of the Heterodyne Boys, the last two of the lineage known to have survived, and they were ‘good Heterodynes’ who were more likely to destroy or control monsters rather than to create more of them. Not all of the Heterodynes were like them. However, some twenty years before the story opens Klaus and the Heterodyne Boys disappear in the course of one of their adventures trying to clean up and reopen Europa. The Boys are never seen again but Klaus eventually turns up again, carrying with him a small child whom he acknowledges as his son and heir. He brings Europa back to some kind of civilisation, ruling from an airship city, and brings his son, who is now in his late teens/early twenties, with him on his trip to deal with this university problem, wanting to see if the boy is fit to succeed him.
Meanwhile, Agatha is mugged on her way to university by a returned soldier from the perpetual wars that are going on in Europa, and her locket is stolen. Unknown to her, the locket is a device that keeps her from ‘breaking through’, that is, from becoming a powerful Spark. So when she comes into power, she has no concept of what is going on……she has suddenly become very dangerous, very valuable, and a threat to everyone including herself. Now read on!
