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Girl Genius Graphic Novel and Kickstarter Extras for 2022!

Created by Studio Foglio

Adventure, Romance, MAD SCIENCE! The next volume of Phil & Kaja Foglio's acclaimed graphic novel series!

Latest Updates from Our Project:

May Girl Genius Update (I'm sorry I missed April!)
10 months ago – Wed, May 31, 2023 at 04:38:22 PM

Well, I’m still packing and shipping things. I’ve had some setbacks but of course nothing that will keep me from getting you your books. It’s just a bunch things that have delayed me. It’s always something. I’m very sorry for being so behind, and I really appreciate your patience with me.

Phil is currently working on something neat, a set of illustrations for Advent-style countdown calendars with dice inside. They can be used for pretty much anything, holidays, graduations, birthdays, whatever you’re looking forward to. Above, I’m showing off the two pieces Phil has drawn so far. He’s doing four total, I know he’s planning a party scene with the Jägers and I’m not sure what the fourth will be. I think they’ll look really great once Cheyenne’s got at them with his magic box of colors.

While I pack things, I’ve been catching up on the TV shows I loved in the 1980’s. Back then if I missed it it was gone, so there are a few series I still remember but never got to see all of. I loved a show called Wizards and Warriors (cough cough, the incredible villain). Unfortunately, whatever we were doing back in 1983, it always got me home for about the last quarter of the show, and I always felt bad that I didn’t get to see the whole thing. WELL! It turns out it was terrible, so there were only 8 episodes, and now I have them on DVD. Now, 40 years later, I’m getting closure on one of my early nerd influences. Yay! I will say, the princess is an embarrassing stereotype, but it turns out I still love this dumb show. It makes me laugh so hard. I love the part where the villains are playing some kind of fantasy not-chess, and the pieces are just glow sticks stood on end. The kind you get at children’s birthday parties and raves. It’s amazing. I’ve also got Tales of the Gold Monkey and Thundarr the Barbarian waiting, so I’m excited about those.

Still, I can’t even blame "tv distraction" for my latest goof, since I wasn’t watching anything when I made it. Thank goodness I caught it though, because I printed the wrong labels and very nearly sent a huge shipment of softcovers to a bunch of you who were supposed to get hardcovers. I did notice in time, no fear. I had to peel the labels off of every package, void a bunch of stuff I’d paid for, triple-check and print new labels and do the whole thing over again. It was horrifying.

As always doing this all myself is not…fun. I do have help from my Mom and kids when they have the time, but they’re pretty busy with their own work so mostly it’s me. I had really hoped that this time I could hire the job out, but between my not wanting to charge too much for postage and the USPS raising their rates again, I couldn’t afford it. So here I am. That’s not your problem, of course, except that it means I get the books out more slowly than I’d like.

Also, I missed April. I’m so sorry! That’s what I get for posting on the last day of March I guess, I was sure I’d already posted. I don’t have much more to say but I know it’s still important to say something. My biggest problem is that I want to give news, but I really don’t want to just come on and give a bunch of excuses for being behind schedule, nobody cares and I don’t like to whine about it. So the news ends up being "yup, I’m still putting things in boxes and dragging them to the post office." Scintillating, I know.

But that’s what I’m doing! Packing and shipping! I’ll make sure not to miss the June update. See you soon!

Thanks, everyone!

--Kaja

Last-Minute Girl Genius March Update!
12 months ago – Fri, Mar 31, 2023 at 11:00:45 PM

March is over, I’ve got about an hour left of it here in my time zone. So here I am with a last-second update.

Thank you for your patience as I continue to pack and ship your rewards. It's taking longer than I'd like so I thought I'd send out a small digital present to everyone in the PDF spreadsheets from when I sent out the campaign’s PDF pile.

Emails are currently sending, containing a link to a PDF download at DriveThruComics. That's the same service we use to send the PDFs for the Girl Genius collections. The story is a little 8 page story I adapted and drew, based on a Norwegian folk tale about trolls. It was drawn for a comic anthology called "Last Dangerous Christmas" published in 1997. Quinton Hoover of Magic the Gathering fame did the inks. I was very honored.

Don’t worry, I didn’t take any time out of packing your stuff to prep the files, they were already set up from a project I abandoned a while back. I hope you enjoy the story!

--Kaja

p.s. If the link doesn’t show up, check your spam folders. If you need us to resend, don’t use the comments below, we might miss your message. Write to us at [email protected] .

Thanks everyone!

Girl Genius: the Exorcism Engines February 2023 update
about 1 year ago – Fri, Feb 17, 2023 at 04:49:55 PM

Hello again, everyone!

Not much to report, I’m packing and shipping things. It’s going slower than I’d like because once again I’m having to do it all in house. Postage went up again and the money pool simply won’t cover having someone else do the work. I hate it, but I also hate having to charge you guys as much as I do for shipping. It’s already horrible and people complain, but in most cases it doesn’t actually cover the whole price, and I don’t have any left over for hired help.

I back a lot of crowdfund-y projects, and I notice that a lot of us wind up having to post things like "I’m sorry I haven’t posted an update in a while, there isn’t much to say right now, things are just chugging along as usual." I guess it’s nice to know I’m not alone, but it also tells me to just post anyway. I already know that, but it’s good to be reminded. So yes, I’m working on it!

All the original art pages are now on their way to their destinations. I’m now doing pick and pack with books. Fun times! I’ll post again soon when I have more to say.

One last thing, Chris (who helps with the emails) tells me that some folks are asking about when the next crowdfunding campaign will be. That’s very sweet and I actually appreciate it a lot because sometimes I feel like everyone MUST be fed up with me by this time. The answer is I don’t know yet, I hate to launch a new one when I’m still packing up the old one. I would like to do a pins and pointies campaign soon but I don’t quite know when that could be. I’ll let you know!

Thanks, all!

—Kaja

Girl Genius: the Exorcism Engines January 2023 update
about 1 year ago – Tue, Jan 31, 2023 at 06:45:18 PM

Well. Despite my earlier optimism, I am now officially behind. I am so sorry about this, I hope you’ll all forgive me for the delay. I thought I had everything for the Envelopes of Madness and it turned out I had made a mistake and didn’t have it all, and then some things happened, and I’m only now starting to get things out the door. I kept putting off the January update hoping that at any minute I’d have more to say, but today’s the last day of the month and I don’t have much to add to that, so I’m just posting to let you know I’m still alive and working on shipping. I’ll make sure to post again with a better update early in February to let you know how things are going at that point. Happy Year of the Rabbit everyone, I hope it’ll be a great one for everybody!

Thank you all for your patience and support!

—Kaja

December Girl Genius Update! Happy New Year!
over 1 year ago – Sat, Dec 24, 2022 at 11:11:00 PM

Hello everyone! I'm sorry this update is later than usual, it's been a busy month and the time slipped away. It's Christmas eve here and I've got a lot going on, but right now I'm taking the chance to sit down for a minute. 

Packing is going slowly at the moment but will really kick into gear in January, so we're still on our stated schedule, even though I would have liked to have shipped sooner. When the currently running story of the dragon Franz and his adventurer friends is finished, I'll add a PDF of that to your PDF pile as thanks for your patience. (And now I'd better make a note of that so I don't forget.) It turns out it's going to be its own book, so that's a fun surprise, even to us.

The USPS has raised the domestic rates significantly over the winter holiday season, so I'm getting the thousands of packages that need to go out prepped to ship right after the rates are lowered  to a mere expensive rather than horrific.  To our Canadian and overseas backers, those rates don't affect your packages, the rates for those are ridiculous all year round. We're constantly having to tell people "Yes, they really do charge us that much and often more. No, we are not making money on shipping charges." We understand that the shipping charges are awful. We do appreciate so much the people who want to support us, we love you for it, but all the support doesn't have to be from crowdfunding and we understand if people don't want that level of expense! Just reading our work and telling your friends about it is a kind of support we love, it really helps us out so much. Spreading the word that we even exist is still one of our greatest challenges, partially because just making the comic and getting the books printed already takes up so much of our time. Advertising? What's that?

I hope you all have a wonderful end of the year, whatever you're up to! I'll get the January update going earlier, and I hope I'll have a lot more to say. 

Happy New Year, everyone!

--Kaja