Broken Frontier

Although it might mean stopping an epically intense storyline in mid-stream, Shadowgirls is posting some character profiles in place of comics this week. This is a pretty smart move on the part of creators David A. Rodriguez and Dave Reynolds, providing an excellent jumping-on point for new readers and preventing any confusion further down the line.

Another webcomic which could consider doing this is Last Blood, which is introducing/killing way too many characters. Suspension of disbelief is actually critically important to the zombie genre, one more rooted in reality than other horror categories, but it seems to have gone right out the window as of late. It also doesn’t help that the creators are over-explaining themselves a bit. Many of their answers are better suited for a forum response than a full update.

Finally, one major webcomic already does a pretty good job with the new-reader-catch-up, but still could stand to benefit from Shadowgirls ' example – Girl Genius. One look at the roots of the multiple award-winning steam-punk magnum opus shows the webcomic to be intimidating as hell. There’s so much world to discover, and eventually, so much continuity, that the webcomic is expansive, compelling and more than a little mind-blowing.

But a handbook entry, much like the one employed by Shadowgirls, is perfectly suited for this kind of task. A format lifted right out of the Marvel Handbook is made to pack this much material into a page or two. This doesn’t necessarily mean it's interesting reading, but if someone wants to know exactly who someone is in Phil and Kaja Foglio’s world, a handbook entry provides the perfect answer.

On the other hand, with a webcomic like Girl Genius running at full steam (no pun intended), one handbook entry (or even several) might not do the job. This might be the place where the creators shell out some money for an entire handbook run to print. They create a new way to entice readers when sent to comic book stores with the regular collections, but they also serve a more practical purpose, because writing a handbook for the entire cast of Girl Genius, as seen here, would probably prove maddening (and again, sorry for the pun).

Regardless, (in the rare event you haven’t heard of it yet), Girl Genius is one solid read, with whimsical characters, an intriguing alternate sci-fi setting and an extremely classy style. But running five years Monday-Wednesday-Friday has created an abundant archive, and although the Foglios have done a great job wrapping it up altogether, it just might be time to call for an Encyclopedia Heterodyne for this Eisner/Harvey nominee.