Or: Maiden Absolutely Doomed to Endless Machinations Over Inscrutable Scientific Enigmas in Lieu of Living Effectively, if that helps.

Dresden Codak draws a web-comic that appears to share the same genre as Girl Genius; this one-off strip in the form of a board game is actually a time-line description of how an “auto-didactic robot-girl” turns into a scientist.

(full size-image and comic, reprinted with permission)