TWCL

[TralltNoodle]

As a steampunk enthusiast, I was wondering what's out there. I generally gravitate to comics in the steampunk genre or containing elements of steampunk. For me, it's an I-Know-It-When-I-See-It situation. However, does anyone believe their are certain "requirements" for defining a comic as steampunk?

Some of my favorites are:

Girl Genius (Though some dispute it as "gaslamp" instead of steampunk):
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/

Machine Gun Angel
http://machinegunangel.comicdish.com/

The Next Adventure:
http://thenextadventure.thecomicseries.com/


Transpose Operator (May be considered more "Dystopian")
http://www.transposeoperator.com/

Full Steam Ahead (As standard steampunk as you can get. Great story and style, but it updates randomly after many months.)
http://fsa.smackjeeves.com/comics/

Strangely, all the steampunk comics I read are by women (or have a woman co-creator as in the case of Girl Genius.)

[Metruis]

The genre of steampunk isn't too difficult to define. Yes, it might have a bit of "I know it when I see it" but when it gets down to it... steampunk is an alternate history genre where steam power was overdeveloped and electricity very likely never came to be.

It's nothing to do with Victorian stuff with cogs and goggles (though that helps to visually define it, sure!), it's really just alternate history and then what the writer does to it. Nothing else is a requirement. It can be set at any point after steam power was developed, it can include fantastical developments our world doesn't have, but in the end it really is just technological history masturbaImean development, right.

Hey, I was a steampunk before it was cool to be into steampunk. The rules really are "take anything you want, then add steam power." If it doesn't fit that requirement it's gaslamp, or dieselpunk or something else in the xpunk genre. There may be iconic imagery and certain frequent situations and visuals that really define the genre but they're not the important part. It's the steam power that's important. The machinery, not the clothing. You know what I'm saying?
_________________

[Varethane]

Not a comic, but has anyone read The Court of the Air series by Stephen Hunt? I think those books are my favourite steampunk series to date....

I've read a LOT of steampunk comics because I love the aesthetic of that sort of thing, and unfortunately most of the time while the art can be good the writing or character tropes and archetypes can leave me cold... however, I have found some I like! A couple of which you list here, haha. Personally, I enjoy the steampunk stories that are heavy on the fantasy and light on the real history... the ones set in alternate worlds where real nations don't exist and possibly the laws of physics don't even always apply. So long as the rules of the fictional world are consistent unto themselves, it's all a-ok by me!

I think Gunnerkrigg Court has some elements of steampunk in it-- the merging of fantasy and science fiction, the emphasis on showing crazy designs for technological ideas that could never work in the real world but which are totally plausible and sometimes commonplace within the world of the comic... (robot cows anyone?) The creator has a certain fascination for meticulously rendering mechanical (as opposed to digital) technology so that it LOOKS like it could work, even if perhaps it actually wouldn't.

Also a friend of mine has recently started up a steampunk comic here which is shaping up to be sort of interesting-- heavy on the fantasy elements, but with enough brass-clockwork-tech to give it that steampunky feel that I am pretty much all over. XD

/thoughts on my favouritest genre. I WANT MOAR STEAMPUNK.
_________________

[vulpeslibertas]

Metruis wrote:

Hey, I was a steampunk before it was cool to be into steampunk.

Hey, I was being into 'being into things before it was cool' before it was cool.

I think that's a pretty good definition right there. Although Victorian era clothing has definitely become a fixture of the genre.

I think the defining mood of Steampunk and why it's appealing is that the technology is all simple and understandable... no microprocessors, no hidden things to break on you. What you see is what you get. It's sort of a fusion between geek culture and the hippy back-to-nature thing.

Steampunk also takes us back to the time when technology was heralded as the highest achievement of man. Before Skynet was doomed to kill as all, destroy the environment, debase our children, and run up our electricity bill.

It also posses some pretty "What if..." elements: Alternate history, alternate technology, alternate society, alternate clothing styles...etc.

Come to think of it, I'm playing FFX right now. And it's kind of a steam-punk fable. Or, at least Mage-punk. Evil technology wipes out the world, and now an alternate-punk world has risen in it's place.
_________________

[Kail]

It's not a label I'm particularly fond of. A lot of the things I see labelled as "Steampunk" don't have anything to do with steam or steam power (Final Fantasy, for example) and almost none of it has any kind of a punk motif. It's like some weird offshoot of Cyberpunk that has nothing to do with Cyberpunk.

As for what I think of when I see the term, usually it's Victorian era sci-fi. In general, if it's not industrial era pseudo-earth, I'm hesitant to call it Steampunk.

[lianne]

I think it's used quite a lot for anything with a historical-ish (usually post-medieval, often with magical elements) setting with anachronistic levels of technology - not necessarily steam-powered or Victorian.

It's not the proper definition of Steampunk, but I do have some sympathy for this use: there's a whole category of works for which there isn't another word that works. Alternate history requires it to be based on actual history, sci-fi generally implies a modern or future setting and gives people the idea the science is hard, fantasy implies that pseudo-Tolkein/pseudo-medieval setting to a lot of people or else is just a really broad category. And people seem to accept this use, which makes it useful for people to use it this way.

I think the way the loose use of Steampunk does connect to the more proper steamy kind is that a lot of so-called Steampunk embraces the general feel and genre conventions of the early industrial sci fi - Jules Verne, etc - that is one of traditional Steampunk's main influences (I think).

Although I like Steampunk in theory, in practice I find there's something that doesn't quite grab me about most proper Steampunk. But I really like a lot of the looser idea of Steampunk - I guess b/c I like things that have an interesting setting and aren't afraid to work in some technology.

Here are a couple I like that describe themselves as Steampunk, though I'm not sure I would have described them that way myself:

Red Moon Rising - I think you could say this one actually has a hint of the 'punk' aspect in that it's got 'that people on the run, cynical view of authority' thing going on.

The Becoming This one's got more religious machinations and the like, which doesn't feel as Steampunk to me, but the style is very intricate in a way that does, somehow.
_________________

[vulpeslibertas]

Kail wrote:

A lot of the things I see labelled as "Steampunk" don't have anything to do with steam or steam power (Final Fantasy, for example)

I wasn't calling Final Fantasy steam punk, I was saying it had a fable based on the idea of technology being inherently good or evil, which I believe is part of the underlying mood that makes Steampunk attractive as a genre.

Clearly, if it doesn't have steam-powered machines, it's not steampunk.

By the way, what the heck is the "punk" supposed to signify? Isn't the idea of a punk someone who's out on their own? A rebel against society? If you look at standard cyberpunk, usually there's a lone hacker against the evil corporations that dominate society or whatever. So to be true Steampunk, do you have to have the rebellious counterculture element? Usually, the main character is unusually skilled with steam technology, correct?
_________________

[Kail]

vulpeslibertas wrote:

Kail wrote: A lot of the things I see labelled as "Steampunk" don't have anything to do with steam or steam power (Final Fantasy, for example) I wasn't calling Final Fantasy steam punk, I was saying it had a fable based on the idea of technology being inherently good or evil, which I believe is part of the underlying mood that makes Steampunk attractive as a genre. Clearly, if it doesn't have steam-powered machines, it's not steampunk. By the way, what the heck is the "punk" supposed to signify? Isn't the idea of a punk someone who's out on their own? A rebel against society? If you look at standard cyberpunk, usually there's a lone hacker against the evil corporations that dominate society or whatever. So to be true Steampunk, do you have to have the rebellious counterculture element? Usually, the main character is unusually skilled with steam technology, correct?

Re: Final Fantasy, I wasn't intending to slag on you specifically. I see a lot of people refer to the games (and other similar settings) as "Steampunk" because they're a mix of sci-fi and fantasy. Like lianne says, it's often used as a label for stuff that just doesn't fit into other genres (or which people don't want to fit, because Sci-Fi is nerdy, even though what Jules Verne was writing as Sci-Fi is basically what we're calling Steampunk) which annoys me.

Re: Punk, I confess I'm having trouble coming up with a working definition for this one. I wanna say it handles relatively adult themes (sex, drugs, violence) in a fairly dark way, and there's generally a fairly strong counterculture element in it, but that seems a bit vague to me. It's just that most of the Steampunk stuff I see (and I'll concede that this may just be my shitty library at fault here) has more in common thematically with Indiana Jones than it does with Neuromancer.

[vulpeslibertas]

Kail wrote:

I wasn't intending to slag on you specifically.

Now I feel slagged.

All that other stuff that isn't steampunk, that keeps getting classified as steampunk, I just call ____punk. Hence, Final Fantasy is Magepunk, Monsters Inc would be Monsterpunk. I jokingly refer to Punkpunk as a genre, although I don't know what kind of horrible aglomeration that would be.
_________________

[Varethane]

vulpeslibertas wrote:

Punkpunk

Things like Tank Girl, maybe?
_________________

[Clint Wolf]

I wrote a whole article on this subject awhiles back because I felt like the term was spiraling out of all sense. It was inspired when someone claimed Firefly was a Steampunk setting.

http://satelliteshow.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/the-scope-creep-of-steampunk/

If you don't want to read the whole thing, here's an excerpt:

Quote:

The “punk” aspect of Cyberpunk or any of its derivatives (of which Steampunk is only the most well known) is not just there for show, but because any of those genres should capture a spirit of a society bleeding out on a technological fringe, a technology that has the power to both free and oppress, a height of wonderment and possibility contrasted with a depth of exploitation and despair. These are the times and places where the rebels thrive, in the scientific revolutions that reshape the world. But as Jeter (by accident or design) covers in his letter, these revolutions make their own specific genres, because today’s breakthrough is tomorrow’s mundanity (or obsolesence), and therefore there also needs to be that freeze frame of reference and context inspired by a particular setting where that technology matters. And if you don’t have the tech as a major theme, then you’ve got something entirely different.

Kaja Foglio herself coined 'Gaslamp Fantasy' to describe Girl Genius, even though tech is definitely a major theme of the comic. I don't know if she did that because she didn't want to contribute to the overstuffing of the Steampunk genre or wanted to just avoid any controversies attached to it, but if she wants to err on the side of caution, it's fine by me.
_________________

[Lavenderbard]

I tried calling the story I just wrote dieselpunk, and after some discussion with my writer friends I was forced to conclude that it was just diesel, and not punk. So I said that it was a story that the marketing department would probably call dieselpunk, should it ever have the benefit of a marketing department. That was a statement nobody seemed able to argue with.
_________________

[Clint Wolf]

Lavenderbard wrote:

I tried calling the story I just wrote dieselpunk, and after some discussion with my writer friends I was forced to conclude that it was just diesel, and not punk. So I said that it was a story that the marketing department would probably call dieselpunk, should it ever have the benefit of a marketing department. That was a statement nobody seemed able to argue with.

Actually a marketing department might very well go right past Dieselpunk and call it Steampunk, since they know "Steampunk" as a word with a ready-made audience. Marketing people are generally more interested in sales than semantics.
_________________

[Lavenderbard]

Clint Wolf wrote:

Marketing people are generally more interested in sales than semantics.

You may have a point there. I wonder how disappointed these theoretical readers would be.
_________________

[dpat57]

<glances disconsolately at all the half-finished steampunk novels from almost a decade ago, sitting gathering dust on his hard drive>
_________________