I love this graphic novel series enough to have it in my sidebar. I follow several dozen online and print graphic novels, because they’re excellent. If I included them in the links, it would be probably bore you.
Girl Genius is there for lots of reasons.
Give me 600 words, and I’ll blather about why I love it. And why new writers of high and epic fantasy are well-served if they pick up some pointers from Kaja and Phil Foglio’s masterwork Girl Genius. (There are hundreds of other graphic novels and manga that could help, as well. Pick one you like, read critically, and apply.)
You can read this vast story online at the above link. Or please consider, for more depth (and fun), starting your own collection of the pages bound together in softcover trade paperback form. The first one is Agatha Heterodyne & the Beetleburg Clank. You’ll be helping fund newer chapters of this immense and wonderful story.
- Story beats. Girl Genius is a multi-part graphic novel, a comic book adventure on steroids. Bless the internet for making things like this more available! Because it is a gigantic page-by-page series of graphic novels, this story has clear and recognizable beats. There is at least one major, interesting, or funny (or all three) thing happening on every page. There are always peripheral events happening, too, which just add to the fun.
- Depth and worldbuilding. I’ve been following since around November of 2010. I’m regularly blown away by the incredible detail in the world of Agatha Heterodyne and her friends…and how it all supports rather than overwhelms this story.
- Plot. Yes, Virginia, there is a plot. A vast and devious one, that frequently hides its tracks in hilarious or heartbreaking side quests. I trust the Foglios to know exactly where they’re going.
- Art. Graphic novel, duh. The Foglios have realized a lot of the early promise I saw in the Dragon Magazine runs of ‘Phil and Dixie’ (yes, I am that old.) The art of Girl Genius brings together an incredibly skilled team, to create some of my most favorite characters in a gorgeous world. Also, this team loves costumes.
- Diversity. Kind, calm, matter-of-fact diversity, where lots of different kinds of people interact without the slightest hint of our worlds’ racist and sexist attitudes. And without any of the self-conscious, aggressively overt, and equally divisive posturing that often seems to flavor arguments from the real world’s more left-of-center population. Agatha’s world has its own serious problems, but the color of one’s skin and the nuances of one’s gender identity and preferences do not seem to be an issue. The Foglios and their team are not afraid to write and portray real people with real bodies and minds.
- Merchandising. Yes, there are great T-shirts, pins, toys, etc. available from the main website and its affiliates. But the Foglios and their team have skillfully navigated some major developments in outreach and sales. They fund collections of their works with popular, well-considered, and very lucrative Kickstarter campaigns. They’re active at genre conventions and through social media. Probably most ambitious, they’ve adapted the visual media of their graphic novels into text. Book versions! Ebooks and print novelizations that tell the same story, but offer exciting new tangents that fill in the whole epic in all its formats.
- Responsibility. The Foglios and their team are incredibly generous with their time. From working with and helping showcase other graphic novel creators, to donations of time and goods to worthy causes, and actually stepping away from Hugo Awards nominations so other people could have a shot…Okay, I’m sniffling sentimentally here. But the creative community really needs to have its kinder, gentler inspirations, in the face of so many ‘Screw you, I got mine’ success stories.
Every single one of these points are things that benefit other writers. Learn from the Professors Foglio, folks.