The first thing you need to know about Phil and Kaja’s series Girl Genius is that it’s not steampunk. Despite the fact that the material is more gleefully anarchic than 98% of the stuff currently getting the “steampunk” label slapped on it, they prefer the term “Gaslamp Fantasy”, and when the product is this good, there’s no sense arguing.
Initially a webcomic, Girl Genius has appeared in a variety of printed forms. Agatha Heterodyne and the Beetleburg Clank differentiates itself by being printed on glossy paper and including a new short feature. While the new material is in color, the original serial material is reprinted with a lovely sepia sheen reminiscent of old photographs. The result is a gorgeous book with enough new material to entice longtime fans of the series, or to serve as an introduction to readers who are just discovering it.
And it is an introduction to the world of the remarkable Agatha Heterodyne, whom we first meet as a bumbling student at the University in the town of Beetleburg, an outpost of Baron Klaus von Wulfenbach’s freshly minted empire. Agatha means well, but she can’t seem to build anything. And in a world where mad geniuses called Sparks regularly create clockwork marvels and artificial life forms called constructs, that means her prospects are limited. But when Wulfenbach arrives in Beetleburg via his airship castle (you knew the zeppelins had to be along eventually), Agatha’s safe and carefully constructed world gets torn apart. Within a matter of minutes, she gets mugged, meets the Baron’s rakehell son, and gets herself thrown out of the University. And then things really start to get strange, as a renegade “Clank” – think “steam-powered robot” – starts stomping its way across the city in a way that focuses all sorts of unpleasant attention on Agatha. In the meantime, there’s some nasty business involving a missing locket, the mysterious behavior of Agatha’s adoptive parents, the Clays, and the cheerfully destructive presence of Wulfenbach’s personal guard of Jägermonsters, whose good-natured bloodlust is matched only by their loyalty. And above it all floats the spectre of the long-missing Heterodyne Boys, whose over-the-top adventures are dreams of the golden age before Wulfenbach seized power.
The short feature at the back, on the other hand, is set much further along in Agatha’s personal timeline, and also contains an appearance from Krosp, the Emperor of All Cats (who’s been traveling with Agatha for quite a while and…it’s a long story. Go read it). Investigating the suspicious death of a con man who took a small town for all of their gold, Agatha instead stumbles across an ingenious scam that literally reaches beyond the grave.
In a word, Girl Genius is fun. It’s filled with interesting characters doing interesting things and having a good time doing them, and the Foglios’ distinctive style matches the tone of the material perfectly. Visual and textual storytelling mesh perfectly, as a world that has a whole lot in it to explain instead opens up to the reader quickly, easily, and in a way that avoids extinction-level asteroid-sized exposition dumps. Things may start a little slow, but they very quickly ramp up to the sort of full-throttle, madcap adventure that leaves readers breathlessly wanting more.
(Airship Entertainment, 2011)
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