Hark! A (Brontë) Vagrant

If you loved her Dude Watchin' with the Brontës or  The Rochester Wedding Party cartoons, you will be happy to know that Kate Beaton's works are going to be published in hardback:

Hark! A Vagrant
Kate Beaton
Hardcover: 160 pages
Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly (September 27, 2011)
ISBN-10: 1770460608
ISBN-13: 978-1770460607


Hark! A Vagrant takes readers on a romp through history and literature—with dignity for few and cookies for all—with comic strips about famous authors, their characters, and political and historical figures, all drawn in Kate Beaton’s pared-down, excitable style. This collection features favorite stories as well as new, previously unpublished content. Whether she’s writing about Nikola Tesla, Napoleon, or Nancy Drew, Beaton brings a refined sense of the absurd to every situation.
In just four years, Beaton has taken the comics world by storm with her non sequiturs, cheeky comebacks, and irreverent punch lines. With 1.2 million monthly hits on her site—500,000 of them unique—and comics appearing in Harper’s Magazine, the National Post, and The New Yorker, her caricatures of historical and fictional figures filtered through a contemporary lens display a sharp, quick wit that knows no bounds.

Publishers Weekly says:

While she’s perfectly content to base her cartoon strips around lesser-known figures (criminal “masterminds” Burke and Hare, anyone?), most of her cartoons put people like the Brontë sisters or Jules Verne out there and wryly undercut them with mock pulp headlines and dishy asides.

Salon interviews Kate Beaton:

The comic you wrote about the three Brontë sisters seems to have really struck a nerve.
That comic got a huge response. It's in the window of a bookstore now.
Finally Anne gets a little credit for commonsense!
Anne's books are totally different from Emily's and Charlotte's. Anne's characters are horrified by what they see, while Jane Eyre is more like, "Well, I'll get used to this guy with his weird, wife-in-the-attic shenanigans. I love him!" People say that "Wuthering Heights" is a romance. It's not. It's a book about horrible people. It's more of a horror story than anything else. (Laura Miller)

NPR praises Rochester Wedding Party:

Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea secured its berth in the book-group pantheon by interpolating an inner life and backstory for Bertha Mason, Jane Eyre's "Madwoman in the Attic."
Beaton's "The Rochester Wedding Party" strip covers much of the same ground — in six panels. And with jokes. (Glen Weldon)

Categories: Comics, Humour