Promotional Information

A compendium of cartoons from the hugely popular online comic artist Kate Beaton.

About the Author

Kate Beaton was born in Nova Scotia, took a history degree in New Brunswick, paid it off in Alberta, worked in a museum in British Columbia, then came to Ontario for a while to draw pictures, then Halifax, and now New York. Maybe the moon next time, who knows.

Reviews

Kate Beaton has become a Web comic superstar with her hilarious look at historical and pop culture tropes from Julius Caesar to Gatsby. Hark! A Vagrant is a newly expanded collection of her witty, literate comics.
*Publishers Weekly*

[Beaton's comics] are witty reinventions of literary and historical figures navigating modern times . . . A high-minded version of The Far Side that is at once of-the-moment and timeless.
*Los Angeles Times*

Simply put, this is the most well-drawn, funniest comic that I've read in a while.
*Wired*

[Beaton's] neat linework and terrific grasp of simple caricature and facial expression sells a lot of the best strips, including Sasaki Kojiro meeting an undignified end, Jane Austen and Nikola Tesla being pestered by their fans, and Lord Byron muttering 'Bitches, man' to a grieving Percy Bysshe Shelley.
*The Onion*

This is that rarest combination of literate irony and devastatingly funny humor.
*Publishers Weekly*

The dumbing-down of American education may be overestimated, based on the extravagant praise lavished upon this web-comic: you need more than a passing howdy with history and literature to get most of the jokes. Suffragettes dish about men like Sex in the City vixens. Tesla, Edison, and Marconi steal one another's inventions. Annabel Lee returns to Poe, but she's such a bummer. Jane, Mr. Rochester, and Bertha act out the love triangle from hell. Three Dr. Watsons vie for Holmes's attention. Friday gets his licks in against Robinson Crusoe. Watson and Crick snoop into Rosalind Franklin's research report. An especially funny set of strips proposes loopy plots based on a book's cover. Beaton's success certainly proves you can do something novel with a humanities degree. While she has self-published previous collections, all of these strips are new. VERDICT Beaton's loose and engaging black-and-white satires peer into the past through a modern lens, requiring knowledge of her source materials coupled with an appreciation for crackpot lunacy. A real find for class assignments and culture-watchers, high school and up. With occasional F-bombs and sexual references.-M.C. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kate Beaton has become a Web comic superstar with her hilarious look at historical and pop culture tropes from Julius Caesar to Gatsby. Hark! A Vagrant is a newly expanded collection of her witty, literate comics. * Publishers Weekly *

[Beaton's comics] are witty reinventions of literary and historical figures navigating modern times . . . A high-minded version of The Far Side that is at once of-the-moment and timeless.

-- Deborah Vankin * Los Angeles Times *
Simply put, this is the most well-drawn, funniest comic that I've read in a while. -- Adrienne So * Wired *
[Beaton's] neat linework and terrific grasp of simple caricature and facial expression sells a lot of the best strips, including Sasaki Kojiro meeting an undignified end, Jane Austen and Nikola Tesla being pestered by their fans, and Lord Byron muttering 'Bitches, man' to a grieving Percy Bysshe Shelley. * The Onion *
This is that rarest combination of literate irony and devastatingly funny humor. * Publishers Weekly *