“There’s just a palpable movement in this shift of the status quo. “People have such access to information and such platforms to talk from now that other voices and characters and other stories are being told, and demanding a change in the way we learn history, and the way we look at movies and literature and everything else,” says Beaton. Sara Josephine Baker and 1930s civil-rights activist Ida B. There are hilarious interpretations of cultural icons such as Agent Scully from the X-Files but Beaton gives equal space to women such as public-health physician Dr. Ultimately, it’s Beaton’s love of old-school literary humour - she’s a big Stephen Leacock fan - and her awareness of feminist history that has made Hark! A Vagrant part of the current zeitgeist. This heartless person who just wants to destroy the world. Today, Id like to talk about one of the many people who inspired me to finally go through with my idea. “It’s an image that scares younger women away because they think feminists are these joyless, awful people. Friday, SeptemHark, A Vagrant Ive got an upcoming addition to my blog, Witty Wednesdays- a weekly comic. “The image of the bra-burning, ball-chopping boogeyman shows up in all these conversations where you’re trying to talk about feminism,” says Beaton who now lives in Toronto. Her new book, Step Aside, Pops, introduces a new arsenal of characters such as the fork-tongued “Straw Feminists” who pop up during already terrifying shopping trips for training bras and in the closets of unsuspecting children.īeaton’s depiction of the evil-minded, cigarette-wielding women could seem 1970s retrograde, but she’s cleverly mocking the vitriol that permeates social-media discussions surrounding gender equality.
Beaton’s first collection, Hark! A Vagrant, published by the venerable Drawn & Quarterly, became a New York Times bestseller. And then you get called a feminist author.”Īrmed with a history degree from New Brunswick’s Mount Allison University and a stint working at the maritime museum in Victoria - coupled with an insatiable appetite for research, literature and pop culture - the Cape Breton-born artist’s website quickly became a destination for intellectual comics lovers. I am not as knowledgeable about history as some of Kate Beaton s readers but I know a great. “It wasn’t a choice that I made: ‘Oh, I’m going to blow the lid off this.’ But people noticed. “I started making comics about history and they had women in them, and people were like, ‘Wow, what kind of feminist work is this to include women, period,’” say Beaton, 32. Feminism, while always the undercurrent, has never been the point of her sly punch lines, despite her love of suffragettes and the Brontë sisters. The feelings of the Brontë sisters and other characters in the graphic novel Hark A Vagrant by Kate Beaton are shown in terms of where the characters are positioned in the panels.
When Kate Beaton first started posting her online comic, Hark! A Vagrant, her focus was on parodying male-dominated history and literature in the most absurdist way possible. People identify as feminists for a multitude of reasons, both personal and political.
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