Hark! A Vagrant!

Weeks back, I went over to the girlfriend's house to hang out for a bit. She passed me a lovely hard cover of 'Hark! A Vagrant' by Kate Beaton. OOOH. While waiting for the woman to get ready so that we could head out, I gave it a flip. Ahhhhh.

I love hard copies, but they're so bulky. I rarely buy them to keep unless it's a story or an illustrated cover that I really like. A couple of us end up sharing books until we find something that we must each possess on our respective bookshelves. I hope this doesn't become one of them. Though I suspect it will. The woman was rather quick in getting changed. When she came downstairs, I was only a quarter through and had to continue the rest at the next opportunity days later, to the pleasurable company of a rich piccolo latte at a cafe.

Besides being a moderate non-rabid fan of graphic novels, I like comic strips. *throws both hands up unabashedly* So many of them around till I'm spoilt for choice. I love the simplicity of Kate Beaton's drawings, the fuss-free lines, and most of all, the greyscale shades. I keep an eye on the website for updates. I love her sense of humor and satirical insights. She's funny, alright. The compilation is made up of all genres from Kate's work, and doesn't just harp on national issues. There're also many strips loosely based on fiction, popular fiction and much-loved (?) literary characters. More about the content and Kate's drawing style in her cartoons on npr.

The National Post wrote in a review, "Her witty feminist revisionism fits nicely into Beaton’s broader shtick: depicting people and characters from the past with the mores and colloquialisms of the present, satirizing both times at once. Thus the Second World War hipster battalion H Company, who ironically appropriate Roman helmets and concentrate on liberating the cafés — the term “hipster” itself dating back to that decade, those disparate subcultures tagged by it always hazily defined. Beaton studied history in academia, but she’s also worked as a museum assistant for very little money. Nothing will give you a healthy and hilarious sense of irreverence about distant eras like performing low-paid clerical work on them."  

The bottom of strip reads: "Anne, why are you writing books about how alcoholic losers ruin people's lives? Don't you see that romanticizing douchey behavior is the proper literary conversation in this family! Honestly. Losers who ruin people's lives are who we want to dream about at night."