Girl Genius Vol 09: Agatha Heterodyne & the Heirs of the Storm
Originally published at tansyrr.com. You can comment here or there.
This graphic novel is one of the freebies that was sent out with the Hugo packet to help those with voting rights become more informed about the shortlisted works. Can I just say, how awesome is reading comics in e-format? I need to digitise my JLA collection stat.
Girl Genius, written and drawn by Phil and Kaja Foglio, is a webcomic available free, which also releases the stories in graphic novel format each year. I’ve been interested in this one for some time and gone so far as to bookmark the site, but have never got around to actually finding the time to check it out properly. This fantastical steampunk (or gaslamp fantasy) tale of “Adventure, Romance, MAD SCIENCE!” has been running for ten years and I knew going into it that starting at Vol. 9 was asking for trouble.
Sure enough, it was hard to get into at first. I liked the artwork, which is bright and gorgeous and features some beautifully human-shaped women (by no means a common event in any comic art). I liked the steampunk/gaslamp iconography, but for the first several pages it seemed like it mostly consisted of young people in corsets and tight trousers shouting at each other.
Gradually, though, Girl Genius got under my skin. The slow dripfeed of backstory and worldbuilding meant that by the time I was halfway through, I pretty much knew most of the relevant things that had happened so far, and what was at stake. I was also very attached to many of the characters, mildly invested in the romances, and starting to laugh at the in jokes.
Agatha and her friends are stuck in a sentient castle that may or may not want some of them dead. One of her love interests is dying in any case, from a mysterious and extremely colourful ailment, and the other is wandering around with an Agatha-imposter, flexing his muscles and generally getting into trouble. As promised on the tin, there is adventure and romance and mad science. The worldbuilding is beautiful, especially the concepts of the Sparks, and the way that magic, science and engineering intersect with each other. The characters are appealling and I particularly loved the scenes where the two boys were forced to work together, acknowledging that they both care for Agatha and, it seems, have a secret past of their own.
Agatha Heterodyne is definitely worth your time, especially if you have a thing for strong, talented female heroes, snark, steampunk, love triangles and people building shiny things in dark laboratories. It has a feel of a particularly smart manga to it, and you can read it without paying a cent. Sounds like a good deal to me.
Ooh, and you can buy the collections in pdf form. I’m so there!