"If you'd like to learn more about this figure, with less sarcasm and swearing."īeaton: Yeah! Because I don't want to just put up a comic about a historical figure that totally lampoons them and then just dances off stage. Nrama: It sometimes reminds me of a dry, sarcastic Schoolhouse Rock. I think they add a lot to the strips, the titles and commentaries, because a lot of what I do is referential humor, and the more you put on the page, the more helpful you might be for someone who's never heard of the topic you're talking about, and the more comfortable you can make someone about something they're not familiar with. Nrama: Will it include the commentaries you have for the online version?īeaton: Yeah, I've expanded a lot of them. Nrama: What's the new material for the collection?īeaton: It'll be about 20 new pages, new strips and things. In the end, why I went with a publisher is just because it felt like the right thing to do right now. And they were excited about working with me, which is another good thing. They put out good products and stand behind them. Everyone's heard stories about bad publishing deals that didn't work out, but I've had no trouble with D&Q. Drawn & Quarterly are an amazing company they've put out beautiful books, and they've tried very hard on the part of the artists.
And I wanted the second I wanted something that was really out there. When you're playing it by ear in a job like this, I found myself thinking, whether I wanted to make the book myself and have it not be as nice but get a bigger cut of sales, or go with a publisher, and have it be in bookstores and have it be on shelves and in libraries. It's books put out by publishers that get the media attention and the award nominations and those sort of things, and I'm not looking for awards or media attention, but I am looking for the next thing to do. I didn't know whether I wanted to go the self-publishing route or book publisher, but I figured at this point at what you might call my career that the publisher was the best idea. I had to put out a new book soon, because the other book is getting old, and I had enough content to fill another one. Different publishers have approached me over the years, and I've deflected them all, because I wasn't ready to publish a book, I didn't know anything about the industry, and I didn't have an agent. I don't know what the reaction or sales are going to be. All I've really done is sign a contract and start work on the extra content. Kate Beaton: I'm not that far into the process, so I can't fully answer that. Newsarama Note: This interview was done a while back, and the book is now finished. How is that experience different from the self-published collection you did, and how do you feel the strip functions differently in that format?
Newsarama: Kate, the big announcement with the strip this year has been the hard-copy collection from Drawn & Quarterly. Our conversation got long enough that it stretched to two parts - can you handle this much Kate Beaton? We phoned Beaton, who relocated from Canada to NYC recently, to talk about her work, the changes in her life, and of course, history and the Great White North. Most significantly, Drawn & Quarterly has announced plans for a hard-copy collection of Hark! A Vagrant later this year, putting her work in the same category as some of the world's most highly-regarded cartoonists. In the past year, Beaton's become even more prolific, contributing a few stories to Marvel's Strange Tales (in addition to her occasional mockery of the likes of Wonder Woman and her recent "Strong Female Characters" with Meredith Gran and Carly Monardo), and cartoons featured by the likes of The New Yorker, Harper's and the Criterion Collection. Hark! A Vagrant is actually a regular compilation of strips, sketches and illustrations on a particular theme, featuring Beaton's sarcastic take-downs of such literary classics as The Great Gatsby, oddball characters such as the Fat Pony, and her look at historical, ranging from well-known names like Napoleon to many figures from her native Canada. Since she officially her webcomic Hark! A Vagrant! in 2008, she's become one of the most acclaimed and widely-read cartoonists online. It's hard to believe Kate Beaton only started posting comics a few years ago. This time out, we're doing some in-depth interviews with some of the best strips online - starting with a two-part talk with one of the web's most popular creators. Welcome back to Newsarama's Wide World of Webcomics, our continuing look at some of the coolest comics on the web.
0 kommentar(er)
