A Descent into Dullness

Girl Genius story by Phil & Kaja Folio, art by Phil Folio with assistance by Brian Snoddy, Mark McNabb & Laurie E. Smith

This pocket-sized black&white omnibus collects the issues that originally ran in normal print. Before the Foglio's realized that trying to sell another floppy on the racks was a sucker's bet and switched to giving it away for free. Which ended up giving them better financial stability...

For those who don't follow the webcomic, Girl Genius is set in a fictional past Europe. One where the main political powers are warring mad geniuses. Or Sparks. The poster child for the Steampunk genre movement at times. Or Gaslamp Fantasy as Kaja Foglio describes it...

The story follows a young student named Agatha Clay. Up until an attempted mugging causes her to lose a family locket, she's never managed to build anything that works. But without it, suddenly the vast and maddening world of the Spark opens up before her. Which leads to her having to deal with robots (or Clanks), talking cats, getting kidnapped by Europes premiere mad overlord and alien monstrosities aboard a city-sized dirigible. And something about a secret destiny and a romance inclined Mad Boy or two...

( More of Jimmy's thoughtful responses )

So to give the many who couldn't care less about my attempts to create an internet feud, lets talk about comics that have moved to the web. Namely Girl Genius and Finder. Both the Foglio's and Carla Speed McNeil made the decision to move their print comics to web only versions. And then make their money selling trades. Now for McNeil I haven't heard how well thats working. But for the Foglio's everything I've read seems to indicate it was a HUGELY successful move for them...

Plus of course both are great books. Girl Genius was moving a little slow of late, but then it kicked it back up a notch with Gilgamesh's recent showing of Utter Bad-Assery. If you enjoy Steampunk style settings, then hopefully you're already a fan. If you're not, you should go now and check this comic out...

Finder was always a difficult book to describe. Its SciFi, and the setting seems to be one of those Far Future ones where Human society is barely recognizable from its current state. But its mostly about a man named Jaeger who is a former soldier, sin-eater, tracker and general ittirent charming rogue. And also about a family he got himself involved with that lives in one of the large cities. Heres an intro page. I own the first four trades for the book, all based off an odd-issue I once got for free at a con. The series hooked me THAT easily. Right now McNeil posts working pages and then when she has enough done, sells the trade. Hmmm. Going back down her newsblog I see that the first trade is now available as a Hard-Cover. Thats a good sign as to the success of her current business plan...

Oh yeah, a link to the latest page button and rss feed. Theres also already an lj-feed...

Today Girl Genius Online is launched. Maybe its just my old dell monitor, but the colors are a lot more muted then the print books. Other than that it seems like the same quality as the print comics...