Yeah, me too.
Even the non-graphic-novel version of the Myth books has Foglio illustrations in it and on the cover, and I for one don’t think they’d be the same without them.
I will grant that Girl Genius took a while to get up to speed, but if you can get to the end of the first or second book and still aren’t interested, then you can safely conclude it’s just not for you.
Oh, and the bit about resolutions taking a while is also true. We still don’t actually know who that woman in the vision in the first few pages was, nor the nature of the strange electrical phenomenon.
But oh, is the ride fun.
I have a friend who really, really dislikes Foglio’s art style. But I encouraged her to read Girl Genius, and eventually she got hooked just as badly as everyone else in this thread save the OP. Although we do complain about the pacing occasionally; it’s meant for graphic novels, not page-a-day webcomics.
I agree with this. Girl Genius is, hands down, my favorite comic in any format, not just on the web, but it’s very easy to lost the plot when you’re reading it a page a day. I remember reading what would eventually be the sixth book, Agatha Heterodyne and the Golden Trilobyte, on his website and not having the faintest goddamned idea what was going on. When I read it collected into a single volume, it turned into one of my favorite story arcs in the series.
But yeah, I’ve been a fan of Foglio since way back. MythAdventures was one of the first comics I ever consciously collected, as opposed to just picking up random issues at the supermarket. Robert Asprin, god love him, was never more than a middling talent as a writer, and Phil Foglio took the first Myth book and turned it into something really extraordinary.
The only stuff of his that I’ve read that was really missing the mark was Buck Godot. I liked a lot of the ideas in it, but the execution was uneven. And the colors were just horrible.
You can read it here, on the Girl Genius website.
This isn’t really criticism so much as description. Yes, those things happen in the story, but you haven’t really shed much light on why you don’t like them. I mean, “We can tell she’s the hero by her position in the frame”? Is that supposed to be a bad thing? I kind of take that sort of thing as a requirement for basic competency in visual story telling.
I can kind of see where you’re coming from on the bit about being able to “stick with a story.” You’re dead wrong about it, because GG has some incredibly deep plotting, but he does throw a bunch of hooks into the first few pages, some of which don’t pay off until years later (and some of which still haven’t paid off). But if you’re just starting out, it does seem like he’s going in a bunch of directions at once.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “exceptionalist dope.” Agatha does start out as a naive and inexperienced young woman, but that’s sort of the point: she’s starting out that way. You’re looking at her at the beginning of her character arc. If she starts out super-competent and powerful, there’s not a lot of places she can grow into. And, like another poster mentioned, there’s a very important plot-related reason for her to not be good at inventing stuff. It’s a while before you find out why, but she stops being a science fuck-up by about halfway through the first book, and stops thinking of herself as a fuck-up by the end of the second volume. In pretty short order (relatively speaking) she turns into one of the tougher, smarter women currently being written in comic books.
When I read the Myth series, Phil had not yet come on board. The cover illustrations were by Velez, as here:
I started reading the Myth Adventures series when Kelly Freas was doing the artwork. Freas is a fine artist, and did a great job…but Foglio’s style is better suited to Asprin’s work. In particular, Foglio’s depiction of Aahz is perfect. I bought new editions of books that I’d already owned, just to get Foglio’s illustrations.
I like Girl Genius, it’s extremely well done overall. I was surprised to see his name (and wife’s) as he was known as a very prolific artist in porn comics and adult graphic novels. You can see some of that background through in the art sometmes where he’s teasing the audience and in the way he handles (artistically) women’s breasts. Most of his female chacters are very lush.