Kate Beaton

Date of Birth: Nova Scotia,

Birth Name: Alberta

Height: New Brunswick feet, Ontario inches (British Columbia centimeters)

VITAL STATISTICS:

Canadian cartoonist, Kate Beaton, is the author of a thoroughly delightful comic series entitled, “Hark! A Vagrant!” that includes humor ranging in topics from literary figures with whom I’m supposed to be familiar to Canadian politics with which I probably ought to be familiar to Beaton’s discussions with her Younger Self with whom maybe I shouldn’t be familiar.

Are you allowed to have this much fun with history?  I’m pretty sure you can be brought before some kind of tweed and be-elbow-patched panel of elders for this sort of heresy.

I could have used a little more of this sort of action back when I was in high school.  Looking at you, Mr. Perry.  That’s right.  I remember you.  Don’t remember anything you SAID but I remember you, you boring old stooge.

I’m not the only person in the world who has an appreciation for Beaton’s work;  she has been lauded in Wired, Macleans, Comic Book Resources, Onion AV Club, MySpace Dark Horse Presents, and pretty much every site on the interwebs that talks about webcomics.  So why not add my voice to the wailing din?

It seems half of Beaton’s reason for drawing comics is an excuse to indulge her deep-seated love for drawing period clothes.  The other half seems to be important women gettin’ sassy and brassy.  Or straight up stabbing a sucka.  I also like how so many of Beaton’s comics seems to end with a “meh” rather than a “bang.”

As a man who respects doing a lot with a little when it comes to Line, I really cannot get enough of Beaton’s ability to convey gesture and mood.  And by “cannot get enough,” I mean, “green with jealous rage.”  Who gets to draw like this?  I mean really, come on.  Come ON.  Come on!

REASON I’D SABOTAGE THIS RELATIONSHIP: Don’t know my own country’s history, let alone Canada’s.  Or, say, who Edwin Booth is.

Kate Beaton’s Hark A Vagrant

[note: obviously, all the comics on in this piece are the intellectual (well...) property of Ms. Beaton.  They were unceremoniously cribbed from her afore-listed website without permission.  “Say, can I reprint some of your comics?” “Sure, why?” “Oh, I'm doing an article on how much of a creepy, never-met-you sort of crush I have on you via your work.” “Ummm...”]