Warning – due to the nature of this comic, steampunk, I may
start speaking like Nigel Thornberry, that is using such words as smashing or
any variation of jolly.
In this review then I will be looking at the web comic girl
genius, a steam punk adventure story, which is to give you the short version, amazing.
Mostly when praising, or even talking about webcomics the phrase “for a
webcomic” kind of hangs around the conversation, like the creepy guy at parties
who laughs at all the jokes but never talks and offers to stroke your hair. But this is simply not the case for GG (girl
genius) which delivers great art, a smashing story and funny one liners all in
one go. When reviewing a webcomic you
have to first decide what kind of review to do of it, whether it be for the
general feel of the comic, the comedy or the plot. After all many (great)
webcoimcs simply do not have an overarching plot, or even if they do only use
it change the situation and so produce more chance for comedy. For GG though
this, even from the very beginning, cannot be said and is a straight forward narrative
for the first page. Unlike other webcomics GG never started life with a gag a
day format such as Clavin and Hobbes or Garfield, but rather started as any
graphic novel should, with a mystery.
That mystery is who is Agatha, the main protagonist? GG starts with a bang, with the dreaded
Wulfenbach Empire is coming to the town of Beetleburg. Plans are set into
motion and a locket is stolen. In this world of quasi Victorian contraptions
and people saying such things as “I say!” without irony, mad scientists exist
and are a terror to the common people. They are referred to as sparks and have
the ability to build the most outlandish of things, walking houses… easy,
flying hats…no problem but what each of these mad scientists love to make are
the ever enjoyable death rays. Agatha is the just a student, who when surrounded
by sparks can’t seem to make her inventions work. Don’t worry if this sounds
like the beginning of a story about a woman’s quest to find herself, within
half an hour of reading she has figured out she is a spark and beginning her
journey across Europe with a talking cat (an experiment gone too right, it
makes sense when you read it), a warrior princess and a host of other characters
who all feel as fleshed out as the protagonist herself. Personally my favourite
character is Moloch VonZinzer (yes they all have such gloriously penny dreadful
names) whose situation gets worse and his sarcasm gets better. But honestly the
amount of side characters to cheer on is fantastic and most of them will have
some kind of death ray.
Make no mistake, when reading GG you will come across the
literally hundreds of different ways mad scientists have thought to kill one
another from electric bees to a walking stick which shoots lightning. Everyone
will have their favourite but for me it is the musical organ of death or perhaps
the fencing epee that freezes people with one touch. All this is done in the best of the steampunk
style and the feel of the Victorian adventure stories permeates throughout the whole comic giving the it a wonderful exuberance
that you simply don’t find that often (honestly every once in a while I would
feel like shouting “what ho!” after a particularly rousing action scene).
But what makes this webcomic special is that it doesn’t feel
like this is the one area that the writers focused on this, in fact it seems to
be just the tip of the iceberg of what this new world could offer. A good
example of this is England in GG, which has never been shown, just mentioned. But
despite this the reader still gets a feel for what kind of country it is with an
immortal queen and the best sparks in existence. The world building then is top notch, which is
an accomplishment in a novel where if the writer can’t be bothered or is just
too hung-over to be subtle can just flat out tell you what the world is like. With a web comic the art has to be just as
engaging as the story, at least at the beginning, and it would take a velociraptor
juggling chainsaws to keep me interested in the exposition needed to explain
the world of GG (of course this could just mean that I have a really small
attention span).
 |
| honestly i looked up velociraptor and got this, oh internet i do love you and your ability to bring my five year old's self's fantasies to life. |
The plot then is all important to GG and one of the main
reasons to read it, it is one of the best examples of steampunk around but
avoids the trap of creating a world just so people can go around with steam
contraptions and more gears on things then could possibly be needed. This is definatly there, but it is not all GG
is, rather the words feels much more fleshed out, a place which feels reel like
only the best of books do. But it is the
little asides that I like the most, one such being:
“people keep giving me rings, but a just a small death ray
would seem more practical”.
GG though isn’t perfect, it slows down dramatically when the
group enters the castle and what was a plot that went so fast it laughed in the
face of light speed slows down (though not without good reason, a lot of stuff
goes down in this section) to the pace of a really fast moving snail. But that
is why now is the perfect time to start reading, the pace is picking up, a suitably
epic battle is under way, secrets are being revealed and giant death suits are
starting to appear. So if you have some spare time check it out, it is well
worth the days you will lose reading it.
check it out at http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php
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