Girl Genius Online Comics!

Now that you've gone online, will you still be publishing dead-tree (printed) Girl Genius material?

YES! We will still be putting out roughly one nice, shelf-worthy Girl Genius book a year, in soft and hard cover editions. We also like the idea of doing stand-alone specials for the comic book market, but that's a project for later.

When is the next volume of the collection coming out?

Volume Seven is still being made, it should be available sometime in 2008. We'll make a big deal about it when the time comes!

Will you be reprinting Volume (whatever is out of print at the moment)?

We don't do traditional reprints of the hardcovers, although we're eyeing print-on-demand publishing with an interested gleam in our eye. As for Girl Genius softcovers, the answer is yes, we plan to keep those in print. So when one goes out of print, we reprint as soon as we can. It can take a few months, though, so please be patient!

Will Volume One of the Collection ever come out in color?

Eventually we hope to have the first collection colored and re-released in all its shiny color glory. But coloring is expensive and we're still saving our pennies. Rest assured that when we do reprint in color, we'll make a big noise about it on the comics page.

Will you be making more hardcover editions?

We make the hardcover editions of each volume of the collection so that we have our own lovely copies. We don't really intend to reprint them, as they are rather expensive to make. When we get the first collection colored and printed, we will do another hardcover run of that book; but otherwise, when they're gone, they're gone. This could change if a larger publisher picked us up and re-released the books in hard and soft cover, but for now that's the way it stands.

Will there be more Secret Blueprints?

Sure, the Role-playing game and sourcebook is in the works right now! The Secret Blueprints were a little comic we published as a teaser when we were first starting with Girl Genius. It featured portraits and bios for several of the key characters in the early stories, and went out-of-print right quickly. We always thought we would do more of these, but we've been pretty busy and haven't got to it yet. And really, the RPG and Sourcebook is pretty much the same kind of thing, only better. So hang in there.

What was printed where in the comics?

Collection 1:
Comic Book Issues 1-3,
online (101 class) Feb 21, 2005 to Aug 26, 2005

Collection 2:
Comic Book Issues 4-6,
online (101 class) Aug 29, 2005 to Apr 17, 2006

Collection 3: (Out of Print, reprinting September 2006)
Comic Book Issues 7-10,
online (101 class) Apr 19, 2006 to Jan 19, 2007

Collection 4:
Comic Book Issues 11-13 (last comic-book issue),
online (101 class) Jan 24, 2007 to July 30, 2007
"Issue 14" Online only to date, (Lulu.com edition in the works)
online (Advanced class) Apr 17, 2005 to June 24, 2005

Collection 5:
Online (Advanced Class):
June 27, 2005 to March 8, 2006

Collection 6 (publishing date not yet scheduled):
Online (Advanced Class):
Begins March 10, 2006

Can I get a Girl Genius tattoo? How much do you charge for something like that?

Of course you can! What do we charge? Why, a tasteful photo and bragging rights, please. (Printed temporary tattoos are NOT what we're talking about here! We still hold copyright for those.)

How is that Girl Genius Role-Playing-Game-and-Sourcebook, Powered by GURPS coming along?

Slower than it should have. But through the extremely patient help of Steve Jackson and his crack team of editors, I'm back on track with a new, improved outline and filling in the gaps nicely. We'll let you know when it's ready.

I want to help write/edit/playtest the RPG!

Thank you! But we already have writers and editors, and we're grumpy territorial animals. Grr. Potential playtesters, on the other hand, are advised to look into the Steve Jackson Games playtester program. There's nothing to do for GG yet, but it doesn't hurt to be prepared.

To heck with the RPG, I have a great story idea that I want to send you!

Noooooo! Please don't! It's not that we don't love you, or that your idea is bad. It's that in order to protect ourselves legally, we must stick to a strict "no submissions, please" policy. That and we have enough ideas of our own to fill several lifetimes. We won't get to it all as it is. Please don't add to our workload stress!

Where can I buy the books? What about other Girl Genius merchandise?

First, check your local comic store. If they don't have it, you can find our books at our own Web store at StudioFoglio.com and at other online shops like Amazon.com. T-shirts and other Girl Genius merchandise can be found at our StudioFoglio.com company store and also at our CafePress.com Girl Genius boutique.

What is Girl Genius?

So glad you asked. Girl Genius is an ongoing "gaslamp fantasy" story by Phil and Kaja Foglio. It started out in 2000 as a periodical comic book, which is collected into three (and counting) larger volumes. Girl Genius follows the career of Agatha Heterodyne—a hapless student at Transylvania Polygnostic University who discovers that she has more going for her than she thought.

What age group is Girl Genius written for?

RATING: Please be aware that Girl Genius is recommended for an audience of teens and up. Why? Well, let's see... we have lots of running around in Victorian underwear, occasional innuendo, a certain amount of violence and the occasional "damn!" Will this deprive us of future happy meal toys? Probably. Are we having fun making our story our own way? Oh, goodness, yes! A lot of our readers still say they read GG to their kids, but now you can make an informed choice. Thank you!

Okay, what's a "Gaslamp Fantasy?"

Influences include Jules Verne and H. Rider Haggard. Expect big, clanking Victorian-style tech, old-fashioned clothes, Frankenstein monsters and airships. Lots and lots of airships. Is it magic? Is it science? A little of both, I suppose–it's Mad Science.

When is Girl Genius set?

About 18 years after the famous heroes called "the Heterodyne Boys" were last seen in Europe.

What's with this "101 class" and "Advanced Class" stuff? Am I getting credit for this?

Okay, here's the story: Girl Genius used to be published as a quarterly comic book. Then we gave in to our envy of Web comics artists and took the book online. But we didn't want to leave the people who had been reading all along stranded in the middle of the story while we went back and made the earlier chapters a three-times a week Web comic. We also didn't want to make the Web comic audience go out and buy a whole bunch of books to get into a story they'd never heard of. And we didn't want to dump several years worth of comic into one huge archive, we wanted to start from the beginning. What to do? We made it into two strips. But have no fear: The 101 class caught up with the Advanced Class in July 2007, and now the two threads have been merged into one archive. So although the two classes are no more, you may still come across mention of them on our site or elsewhere on the Web, hence this FAQ entry. Now you know!

Why classes? As we're told in the comics, the Girl Genius comics are written by Professors Foglio and Foglio of Transylvania Polygnostic University as textbooks for their "True Events in the Life of Agatha Heterodyne 101" class. So if you're reading this, we assume that you're a Spark, and a student at TPU. Or possibly a nefarious rival out to destroy us all. Whatever. We don't really care. Credit will only be given to those students still standing at the end of the quarter.

How nice of you! The best thing you can do if you like our work is tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell people you meet on the bus, tell anybody. It couldn't hurt! We have a lot of nice shirts with the Girl Genius logo available from CafePress, that always helps get the conversation going.

Also, at this time, we have a lovely selection of link banners available for downloading. Actually, we appreciate a link with or without a banner.

Thank you to everyone who has asked how they can help.

I want to make a fan site, but I don't want to step on your toes or otherwise offend you. What should I do?

When we started getting letters like this, we didn't know what to do either. We certainly don't want to discourage shrine sites and the like. So we asked our attorney what to do, and he said to post guidelines. Here they are!

I want to send you something wonderful that isn't a story submission. Where should I send it?

Oooh! Kind letters and the like can be sent to Studio Foglio, LLC, 2400 NW 80th St. #129, Seattle, WA, 98117-4449. Keep in mind that this is just a mailing address, if you make the pilgrimage the nice people at the mailbox might sell you a postcard with a fish on it, but we aren't there!

The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)