Philip Foglio (born May 1, 1956) is an American comic book artist famous for comic books including Girl Genius (co-written with his wife Kaja), and Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire.
He is also the writer and artist of the gaming comic What's New? with Phil and Dixie.
Other career highlights include Myth Adventures (a comic book adaptation of the novels by Robert Asprin), and a number of miniseries for DC Comics (including a well-received revival of Stanley and His Monster that managed to make the fluffy whimsical series into part of The DCU without making it Darker and Edgier). He's also done artwork for a number of Magic: The Gathering and Munchkin cards and for Spiderweb Software's Nethergate and Avernum 1-3.
He is also partly responsible for the little red devil "Beastie" or "BSD Daemon"
◊, the mascot of BSD operating systems. While the canon image was created in the 1980s by John Lasseter, the idea originated from this
Foglio's 1976 picture with visual puns on such UNIX concepts as daemons, forks, pipes, overflows, leaks, bit bucket, /dev/null.
He co-wrote the novel Illegal Aliens with Nick Pollotta.
Works by Phil Foglio with their own trope pages include:
- Angel and the Ape (1991 miniseries)
- Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire
- Girl Genius
- GURPS Illuminati University (illustrations)
- Illegal Aliens
- Myth Adventures
- Stanley and His Monster (1993 miniseries)
- What's New? with Phil and Dixie
- SPANC Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls
Other works by Phil Foglio provide examples of:
- Author Avatar: A fellow in a white turtleneck sweater and black bowler hat who makes cameo appearances in various works, is Phil the presenter of What's New?, and is a minor but significant character in Girl Genius. He also appears in one Munden's Bar story as a fill-in bartender while the regular one is on holiday.
- There was also a card game based on and called XXXenophile, which has been out of print for some time. However, the mechanics of that game (no pun intended) have been brought back by way of The Works - a card game based on Girl Genius.
- Forced Orgasm: The power of superheroine Orgasm Lass is to bring others to orgasm just by touching them.
- He Also Did: XXXenophile, as the name suggests, consists of sci-fi and fantasy themed porn (albeit with a generous helping of plot and humor), which may be a surprise to people who discovered Girl Genius first. Though Phil will still cheerfully refer to himself as a "Gentleman Pornographer", the series is on hiatus while he and Kaja are raising kids.
- Ms. Fanservice: Almost any female character under the age of 40 (and undoubtedly a few over) who appear in his comics. This is also paired with Mr. Fanservice, exemplified best in the spoof-Cinderella.Phil: We've got two Princes! Who thought having
two boyfriends was a good idea?! *Cue Cheshire Cat Grinning Zeetha, Agatha, and Kaja* - Nigh-Invulnerability: The Winslow, except remove the "nigh". Disintegrator beams just tickle a bit. He's reputed to have survived the end of the universe more than once.
- Running Gag:
- The Winslow, a little plush alligator with a cheery attitude who may or may not be the cornerstone of creation, appears all over Phil's work. All hail.
- Also the "Growf" dragons. These were pink, cute, harmless, and subject to explosive parthenogenesis - getting them wet caused them to duplicate at extreme speed. Introduced in What's New? with Phil and Dixie, reappeared in Myth Adventures.
- Signature Style: A very distinctive and recognisable one, which includes:
- Disembodied Eyebrows
- Expressive Accessories
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family (sometimes even on what are supposed to be regular humans who just happen to be grinning.)
- Sexy Dimorphism: In XXXenophile Martian females are all gorgeous, buxom, four-armed women, and the males are tiny, squat, furry, mostly shapeless (and, incidentally, non-sapient) hexapods with disproportionately large sex organs. This is then given an extra twist at the end of the story. After making "First Contact" with a human explorer, a giant battlesuit bursts into the room — and the Martians assume that the giant robot must be a human female.
- Unfinished Business: One of the more poignant XXXenophile stories has a guy encounter the ghost of his female friend and roommate in their shower so they can admit and work out their feelings for each other before she can fully move on, leading to a Shower of Love.
