PROFILE/COMIC: History/Literary Comics @ Hark! A Vagrant!

[Ryan Goble]

Read an interesting profile of artist Kate Beaton @ Psychology Today. A sampler:

Kate Beaton is almost certainly Canada’s funniest history postgrad. Her popular online comic strip, “Hark! A Vagrant,” the second collected edition of which (Step Aside, Pops will be released this fall, mines hilarity from a striking range of subjects, from the Brontë sisters to the French Revolution, Tycho Brahe, and Nancy Drew. And while her strips are as cheerfully vulgar as the men and women who made history, she’s also just published her first children’s book (link is external), about an adorable princess and her fat pony.

You’ve described your options after graduating with a history degree as either trying to work in a museum or creating comics. How did you decide?

It’s hard to get a job in a museum! So I became a comic artist, which doesn’t make any sense either, because nobody goes into comic-book writing for the money. It’s really difficult. But every now and then some historical museum will get in touch with me to talk about projects, and there’s no way that they would be approaching me if I were just an assistant in a museum in British Columbia that nobody came to visit. So, I still get to do my job and to do it within a public education context.

The comic site is harkavagrant.com and the best part about if from a teacher POV is that you can search by topic HERE.