I have it all! Yay! Phil Foglio is a very nice seeming man, in a SantaClaus? kinda way. Though Santas milk and cookies cost a bit less. Volume one of the collected comics is black and white, but the colour samples on the website give you a very good idea. The story is wonderful - MadScience is fun. I can't help thinking WebComics/MiracleOfScience? is somewhat inspired by this. --Vitenka (WonderCon goodies)
The StorySoFar?: Book 1 - Agatha Heterodyne and the Beetleburg clank SeeAbove?. Dozy student is scared of an apparaition, fails to build stuff, her university is overrun by baron Wulfenbach for hiding a 'hive engine' and then a clank (SteamPunk GiantFightingRobots? are FUN and go 'clank' a lot.) runs amuck. Agatha and the clanks presumed inventor are taken prisoner. Short bonus story - The electric coffin. Agatha and her cat assistant dig up a mystery. Best line: "But I tried to kill you! / See? Bad idea. Don't do it again."
Book 2 - Agatha Heterodyne and the AirShip? city. Aboard the airship, Agatha meets a bnunch of oddball prisoners and the barons oddball son. A wonderful story of the heterodynes is told, in sepia. We meet the hero Trygvassen, the Jagaer-generals and the horriofying Miss Pinn. Dupree says she's seen the apparitions too (and they seem to contain Gil and Agatha) We the learn that Agatha Clay is probably actually (duh) the title character Agatha Heterodyne - who then becomes the first servant of the emperor of all cats. Short bonus story - Trelawney Thorpe, Spark of the realm. Silly silly adventure story.
Book 3 - Agatha Heterodyne and the Monster Engine. Lots of play with the bad guys (who aren't all bad - though the pirate dupree is jolly violent) Agatha gets on well with son Gill. Lots of people fight bugs from the hive engine, Agatha's parents turn out to be Punch and Judy, she builds two recurring items (a blue spark-saber which seems to make things vanish and a little clockwork clank that builds other clanks. She escapes with her cat.
Book 4 - Agatha Heterodyne and the Circus of Dreams. Agatha meets a travelling circus of oddballs. Builds several shiny guns and saves them. They hide her from the barons forces. She decides that they are all sparks.
It was, yes - I don't see why it's heavy spoilers, when it's available on the back of the next book. There's a heck of a lot more spoiolers where those come from ;) --Vitenka
On the back of which book? Strange, I consider the Punch & Judy bit one of the biggest spoilers in the series so far. Deciding that the circus troup were sparks was also a big surprise (to me at least). --K
He's referring to the bound books, I think. It's not on the comics, Vitenka, and those are all Kazuhiko has seen, I think. The circus troop revelation is at the end of the most recent (for me) issue - I rather suspect 'tenka has seen one issue more now *envy* - SunKitten
Can't be - the circus doesn't come in until the putative book4 - whilst the clays turn up before she leaves the airship. --Vitenka
The 'back cover of book 4' is in the inside cover of comic 11, since book 4 isn't out yet. And no, the very last panel I have is Agatha standing triumphant with a biiig gun (in her underwear, of course) declaring the whole circus to be sparks. So yes, I guess that was a spoiler - though I didn't think it a strikingly unobvious one. Speculations as to the countess and why castle heterodyne is mad would be more fun ;) --Vitenka
OK, we're in the same place, then. But Kazuhiko is several comics behind still... I think - and I've only seen the first book - SunKitten
Wait - how can she ([this page]) be describing herself as the countess, when she was talking about the countess in the third person earlier? Just general spark maniacal speech?