HARK POPS

Kate Beaton has a sequel to her best selling Hark! A Vagrant. Entitled Step Aside, Pops, it came out in the fall. Here (in italics) is what Beaton says about it:

The comics in the new book are more varied than in the first, playing with form and moving away more from the history/literature parody type stuff more often. There are definitely more comics that focus on things like feminist jokes. It’s all just about what I’m interested in making at the time, so it changes. ...

And a lot of times, if you’re telling a woman’s story from the past, there’s going to be something in there about how she was overlooked by her peers or over time. It’s just there. But these women, underdogs sometimes, are usually someone’s hero, someone who wants their story to be told. So I make these comics about women, and I get a lot of mail that’s like, “Check this other person out!! YOU WILL LOVE HER I LOVE HER!!!”

And I’m thrown all these stories, and of course they are interesting. And when you get into it, you get all riled up, like — yeah, people should know about this person! And this person! And this person! Why didn’t I know about this person?

I think it started a long time ago, specifically, when I made a comic about Rosalind Franklin. Lots of mail from people trying to get me to read about this female scientist or that who was maligned by history or in her time. Really passionate. It’s very touching, in the end, telling these stories is just sharing the love you have. That love is contagious.

I mean history is huge, you’re not going to know everyone, but with women, you really are going to know less. So I find out about people like Ida Wells or Sara Josephine Baker and I’m pacing the room thinking, “I gotta make a comic! People have to know!!”

And I start to look at my work, and I’m thinking that if you leave out these people whose lives were hard and who were overlooked in history, and instead you just go for the easy targets, you’re just making comics about dead white presidents and leaving stories like Ida’s out yet again. It’s not like my comics are some kind of cultural masterpiece, they’re just dinky comics, but you know what I mean? So I made comics about Ida, and they are in the book, and I hope I did a good job because I wanted to celebrate her.