“Girl Genius: Agatha H. and the Airship City” by Phil and Kaja Foglio

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Noth­ing that has any­thing to do with hyp­no­sis (although the sto­ry­line does involve a par­tic­u­lar­ly nasty form of mind con­trol) but just a good read by some peo­ple I hap­pen to know and rec­om­mend. Phil Foglio and Kaja Foglio. Their artis­tic cre­den­tials are impec­ca­ble and their art­work has appeared in such diverse places as “Drag­on Mag­a­zine” and on “Mag­ic: the Gath­er­ing” cards, adap­ta­tions of Robert Asprin’s “Mythad­ven­ture” books, some very NSFW and very well done erot­i­ca, and even sou­venir con­ven­tion plates: Phil is one of the few peo­ple I know who have won the Hugo Award both as a fan and a pro­fes­sion­al artist and Kaja is equal­ly as good.

“Girl Genius” is their love and joy. If you haven’t been read­ing “Girl Genius” online, you should. As one review­er put it: its what Jules Verne would write if he wrote comics, and he’d be jeal­ous. Its the sto­ry of Agatha Het­ero­dyne, heir to the famous Het­ero­dyne Boys Bill and Bar­ry, who cham­pi­oned Good and Right against the mad sci­en­tist “Sparks” of the day, until the day they lost every­thing in a vicious attack and lost them­selves try­ing to deter­mine the cause. Its Steam­punk™ at its finest, and “Girl Genius” is one of the rea­sons for the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the genre.

Agatha knew noth­ing of this. She was pro­tect­ed (in more ways than one) from the harsh life that a Spark encoun­ters, until that life came look­ing for her. Through her adven­tures she has matured from the help­less, bum­bling girl assis­tant to some­one who could become the Het­ero­dyne Heir of leg­end. All she has to do is sur­vive pos­ses­sion (by the mind of her moth­er), the ire of Baron Wulfen­bach (the past ally of the Het­ero­dyne Boys and ex-offi­io ruler of Europa), a cabal deter­mined to seize pow­er by pro­mot­ing a fake Het­ero­dyne Heir, and the roman­tic entan­gle­ments of two strong Sparks, one the son of the Baron and the oth­er the proph­e­sied ruler of Europa. Quite a chal­lenge but Agatha is up to it. (And if you think Agatha looks remark­ably like Kaja, join the club.)

But what is spe­cial is that they are mov­ing away from comics direct­ly to writ­ten fic­tion with the first Agatha Het­ero­dyne nov­el, “Agatha H. and the Air­ship City”. It will be pub­lished in a cou­ple of weeks, and Phil is ask­ing peo­ple to hold off order­ing it until Jan­u­ary 12^th as that not only will cause a spike in the sales count, but its also Kaja’s birth­day. I know I will.

You can get the col­lect­ed vol­umes, too: they’re well worth the effort.

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