Girl Genius

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/

Genre-  Action/Adventure/Comedy

Authors-  Phil and Kaja Foglio

Artists-  Phil Foglio inks, Cheyenne Wright colors

Other Info-  Full color, updates 3 times weekly

 

Introduction

 

          While it is not completely uncommon for a webcomic to transition to print, Girl Genius is somewhat of an anomaly in the webcomic world in that it began as a strictly print comic, and has now transitioned to being 100% online.  It does still release printed books at various intervals, but there are no more single issue comics of Girl Genius, as it is my understanding that there were previously.  Phil Foglio is already something of a legend in print comics, bringing an altogether new and wonderful experience to the webcomic world, which is permeated with hobbyists.

 

          This is a comic produced by a 3-person team, all professionals, so you would expect it to be an extremely well-done comic.  It does not fail to live up to that expectation.  Anyone familiar with webcomics in general will immediately see the difference in quality between this and most other webcomics.  The art is polished, both in line work and coloring, the panel layouts are professional and dynamic, and the writing is generally top-notch.

 

Synopsis

 

          This is a steampunk comic (or "gaslamp fantasy" as the Foglios prefer to call it).  Steampunk is science fiction where technology never really advances past the steam engine, but this technology can be used to create things that are at least as advanced as today's technology, and usually more-so.  Artificial intelligence, flying machines, and energy blasters are created using steam, chemicals, and cogs.  In Girl Genius, the only people capable of creating such mechanical miracles are known as "sparks," and these people possess an inherent gift for creating such devices which usually manifests at puberty.  The ability can be trained beyond its instinctual beginnings, but not all sparks are created equally.  There are some very powerful sparks, and some that are not so grand.  But most sparks are driven completely insane by their gift, making an adult semi-sane spark a rare and valuable thing.

 

          The story begins with Agatha Clay, a somewhat awkward, if not somewhat deranged, girl who is going to the Transylvania Polygnostic University apparently to become a mechanic.  She doesn't seem very good at anything, and is generally looked down upon by her professors and fellow students.  All of this changes one day when, seemingly out of the blue, Agatha creates a huge, lumbering "clank" (a mechanical robot) to go after the local Baron.  She is swept up by the baron onto his giant airship castle, where it is eventually discovered that she is in fact the heiress of a legendary spark family.  She escapes the ship, along with a talking cat, Krosp, who was a failed experiment, and is relentlessly pursued by the Baron and others who wish to use her family name and her talents for their own purposes.

 

First Impression

 

          Upon arriving at the Girl Genius website, you are greeted by a splash page with various options for how to proceed.  The image is a girl holding a book with a bunch of airships in the background.  The art style of the girl and the background do not match.  The girl is drawn with thick, colored lines in a somewhat unappealing style.  The background is super-polished in sepia tones.  The options below the picture read "The Comic," "Read a Short Story," and "Advanced Class."  Well, I'm here for the comic, so I click on that option.  I am presented with a color comic that doesn't fully match either style on the splash page, but is still very nice.  I click "start" to read the comic from the beginning, and find that the comic began as black-and-white before it transitioned to color.  The original art is also appealing, and  I get to reading.

 

          From this first impression, I would suggest that the creators change two things about their splash page.  For one, that image does not do the comic any justice.  It does not convey the theme of the comic very well, and in fact is somewhat misleading.  The girl holding the book with the airships in the background makes me think of Final Fantasy.  I would expect that this comic is about magic and wizardry, not mad science.  Also, the Agatha is clearly not drawn by Phil or colored by Cheyenne in that image, while the background clearly was.  It isn't up to the quality of the comic, and therefore not the first thing you want new readers to see.

 

          The second thing I would change is the options people are presented with.  It is very confusing.  "The comic" link is actually the older Girl Genius comics that were in print, while "The Advanced Class" are the new Girl genius comics created specifically for net publishing.  Both of these sections update 3 times a week, so if you read through "The Comic" and then move on to "The Advanced Class," you will still be missing a sizable chunk of the story.  Eventually, "the comic" will catch up with the current updates and there whole thing will presumably merge.  "Read a Short Story" actually just takes you to specified parts of "The Advanced Class" comic which can be read as stand-alone stories.  None of this is explained, so it is up to the reader to bumble their way through the website and learn it for themselves.  It is all explained if you happen to click the correct tiny link on the side of the comic after you have already selected an option, though, which is useless.  What the creators might consider doing is setting up the splash page in a more vertical format with a short explanation of what each option actually means.

 

The Art

 

          The art of this comic is jawdroppingly beautiful.  In the beginning of the comic, when it was black and white, the art was pretty good.  It got progressively better through the years, and now it's simply fantastic.  Phil Foglio is well deserving of his reputation.  His ability to covey emotion and characterization through body posturing and expression is without parallel.  The comic layouts are dynamic and interesting, while still being intuitive.  Cheyenne Wright then adds the color, bringing the entire thing to life.  The colors are vibrant without being over saturated, the textures natural and well integrated with the line art, and the digital effects applied sparingly and with great effect.  It appears to me that, through time, Phil has transitioned to trusting Cheyenne with more and more of the art, keeping his line art fairly basic without textures.  They have clearly reached a perfect balance at this point, and each of their talents are showcased by the current comic updates.

 

          That isn't to say that the art is without flaws.  But the flaws are so minor as to hardly be mentionable at this point.  If I had one problem with the art that was big enough to even mention, it would be some problems with consistency.  The characters are almost always drawn somewhat stylized, verging on realistic but staying cartoonish.  Every now and again, however, a character will appear in nearly perfect realistic proportions, almost as if one panel was drawn in a completely different style.  But this is rare and barely noticeable, and certainly doesn't distract much from the flow of the comic.

 

The Writing

 

          Phil and Kaja almost always do an amazing job with the writing.  Their world building is so impressive that one cannot help but be drawn into Agatha's world in all of its amazing detail.  Saying this is a "steampunk" comic does not mean that they have relied upon others to build their world for them.  Every detail of this world is unique to Girl Genius, with the exception of some very basic steampunk concepts.

 

          The flow of the comic is natural, well-paced, and exciting.  Action and character development are well balanced.  The reader is never treated to lengthy exposition, all aspects of the story are conveyed through action and active dialog.  There is a lot of humor in the writing as well, despite the fact that this is a dramatic action-adventure story.  The humor is never campy or over the top.  In short, the comic is extremely well written.  The one glaring exception is a recent sewer sequence that went on for many rambling pages for seemingly little purpose, which could be edited out almost in its entirety without losing a single thing from the story.  But one hiccup in seven years of a comic's history is hardly much to complain about.

 

Summary

 

         Girl Genius is about as good as you can expect a comic to be on the internet.  It truly raises the bar for other comic creators, who would do well to pay attention to all the things the Foglios and Wright do correctly with their comic.  On the other hand, their web design needs serious work.  While it is easy enough to read the comic once you know what you are looking at, the splash page is unnecessarily confusing (and unattractive), and the vast quantity of tiny links to the right of the comic once you get past the splash page adds further confusion.  It is a shame that such an excellent comic as this should be marred by such terrible web design.

 

Rating and Explanation of Rating

 

95%

 

          This is as close to a perfect webcomic as I have ever seen.  The art and writing are both professional.  I only took off 5% due to web design problems.  This could be the perfect webcomic with a little more web savvy.