GIRL GENIUS! HUMANTS 5:22! Thursday’s Comics
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009
Welcome to Thursday’s tinkering, technological, Transylvanian Daily Mega Comics Group Updates!
WOW! 🙂 Thursday?! Where has this week gone? Today we want to review another web comic which we have found we enjoy here at MCG.
Girl Genius is an ongoing “gaslamp fantasy” webcomic available at girlgeniusonline.com . Girl Genius follows the life of Transylvania Polygnostic University student Agatha Heterodyne as she discovers that she is not as hapless as she, and others, thinks she is. The series is written and drawn by Phil and Kaja Foglio, Professors in residence at TPU. 😉
“Girl Genius is an ongoing adventure story in which the characters grow, change, run around the landscape quite a bit, and occasionally even die.” The Professors Foglio proclaim on the New Reader Page first. It’s followed by an admonishment to start reading with the first story, it all makes more sense that way. The entire Girl Genius comics archive is available online so it’s easy to access this tales right on your home computer. If you have a lot of downtime, and we emphasize A LOT, on your job you might be able to read them there too, but don’t tell your boss we said you could, okay? We can get in enough trouble on our own, thank you very much! 😉
The authors claim influences which include Jules Verne and H. Rider Haggard. If you want a more modern point of reference think the movie, inspired buy the TV series of the same name, Wild, Wild West. You will find big, clanking Victorian-style tech, old-fashioned clothes, Frankenstein monsters and Zeppelin style airships. It could be magic or science or a little of both or what the Professors Folio refer to as it’s Mad Science.
Girl Genius began in the year 2000 as a quarterly comic book then the Professors decided to take the curriculum online. They faced a dilemma: How to present the story from the beginning to a new webcomics audience without making the established audience of the printed comic book series wait for the web comics to catch up. The anser was simple: Two Webcomics! So they made the earlier chapters a three-times a week webcomic while simultaneously continuing the adventures from the point where the regular printed comic series was, in the new webcomic version. The two strips were titled The 101 Class and The Advanced Class but the two caught up to each other in July 2007, and now the two have been merged into one archive.
Even though the original comic is not published any more, you can also order the Trade Paperback and Hardcover Collections online from their store link or as PDF downloads from Drive-Thru Comics.
The Professors recommend Girl Genius for an audience of 13 and up. Even though by today’s TV standards there is nothing offensive there is lots of running around in Victorian underwear, occasional innuendo, a certain amount of violence and the occasional “damn!” But a lot of their readers still say they read Girl Genius to their kids and the Foglio’s own kids like it and read it.
The Art: Girl Genius is influenced by the Manga style but more like the original Robotech series. It’s very well done, and very detailed. The art in the Volume One is all black and white but beautiful line work! Color begins with Volume Two.
To get an idea of what you will be reading we present The Girl Genius Story So Far exactly as it is on their web site:
Spoiler Alert! By its very nature, the following synopsis will give away the plot.
BASIC BACKSTORY
Girl Genius has been being written for some time now, and there have been a lot of twists and turns in the story. Not all of that is covered here, because really, beyond a certain point it’s just easier to read the story itself, but this should be enough to get you up to speed:
The setting: In a time when the Industrial Revolution escalated into a full-on war, rival mad scientists, (“Sparks” to be polite), are the ruling powers in most of Europe. Keeping them all in line is Baron Wulfenbach, a particularly powerful and cranky Spark who, when someone starts causing trouble, simply steps in and makes them stop. His captial is the gigantic airship fortress Castle Wulfenbach.
The main character: Agatha Clay was a student at Transylvania Polygnositc University, who had truly rotten luck until she was revealed as a Spark. (Some might argue that this, also, was rotten luck.) She has also recently discovered that she is the last of the famous Heterodyne family—beloved heroes who disappeared under mysterious circumstances many years ago. Folk legend claims that they will someday return, but so far they haven’t managed it.
And as requested by Transylvania Polygnostic University Legal Department: This site is not approved by, sponsored by or affiliated with Studio Foglio LLC or Airship Entertainment.
Now let’s check out Legacy Comics’ Humants’ offerings for today!
Humants # 5:
As you recall in Project: New Man # 4, Bearcat suffered some physical abuse to his face at the end of a cattle prod from the villainous Ebenezer Baal.
Now here’s a trivia question for you sharp eyed readers. Why would Baal focus his attack on Bearcats face? Hmmm…? Come on read the stories. What? Yep, that’s right! Bearcats uniform is made from Micro-Mail woven from another of Emanuel’s inventions: Plastanium, the light weight, flexible material which is nearly impenetrable.
Baal would have attempted to cause Bearcat harm the usual ways of direct attacks on his body but once he discovered Bearcat’s padded Micro-Mail uniform protects him from the worst of the assaults, he revised his plan. It was also not possible for him to remove Bearcats uniform because of the special Static Seals which Emanuel built into the seems and openings.
So after figuring all that out, Baal realized the only course of action remaining was to torture Bearcat’s exposed face to get the information he needed.
Having survived the torture and being restored by New Man via his new found mastery of the Unified Field he wields, and even being free of the scars that normally would have occurred, Emanuel decides he will do something about his exposed face so that he is fully protected from any assault.
Any questions or comments? All are welcome.
Click the images for today’s web comics updates.
Check out Thursday‘s posts for Humants’! CU2morrow!
WOW! 2019 is here! We had a fun New Year Celebration. Hope you did the same.
Mark’s Remarks: These midnight updates are beginning to be a habit. 😉
