Thu May 1, 2008 — by Aaron Rosenberg

Happy Birthday: Phil Foglio

What's New, doc?

Born in Mount Vernon, NY in 1956, Phil Foglio moved to Hartsdale, NY, while still a young boy and lived there until he went off to the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago when he was only 17.

While at school, Foglio worked on the science-fiction club’s fanzine, Effen Essef, and was nominated for two Hugo Awards for it in 1976—in 1977 and 1978 he won the Hugos for Best Fan Artist. In 1980 Foglio started a comic strip What’s New with Phil & Dixie for Dragon Magazine. It ran for three years.

He moved back to New York shortly thereafter but soon returned to Chicago. There he illustrated Robert Lynn Asprin’s MythAdventures series and turned the first book into an eight-issue comic book series from WaRP Graphics. From there Foglio got work with DC (Angel and the Ape, Plastic Man, and Stanley and His Monster), Eclipse (Fusion, Dreamery), First Comics (Munden's Bar and Dynamo Joe), and others. He illustrated many card games, magazines, and books, created the character of Buck Godot for Imagine It and went on to create several Buck Godot graphic novels as well.

In the 1990s, Foglio brought What’s New back, this time for Duelist Magazine. He also created the series Girl Genius with his wife Kaja. In 2005 Girl Genius moved online as a free webcomic.

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