Kate Beaton Books In Order

Publication Order of Hark! A Vagrant Books

Publication Order of Children's Books

Publication Order of Graphic Novels

Publication Order of MySpace Dark Horse Presents Books

Publication Order of Dinosaur Comics Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Kate Beaton is a well-known and popular Canadian cartoonist and comics artist. The author has Scottish roots and was brought up on Cape Breton isle in the small town of Mabou alongside her three sisters.

She attended a very small K-12 school that had only twenty-three students in her grade. Later on, she graduated with an anthropology and history bachelor of arts degree from Mount Allison University.

It was while she was in college that she began drawing comics for “The Argosy,” which was the university newspaper. Following graduation from university, she got a job at the Maritime Museum of BC, where she was employed as an administrative assistant.

While she has produced many popular works, she is best known for “Hark! A Vagrant,” a comic strip that ran between 2007 and 2018. Beaton has also been writing children’s books such as “King Baby” and “The Princess and the Pony.”

The latter would become very popular that it was adapted into a series on AppleTV+ titled Pinecone & Pony. The work came out in 2022 and Kathryn was the executive producer of the show.

In 2022 “Ducks,” her graphic novel was named one of the top ten books of the year by Publishers Weekly.

In 2005, Kate Beaton found a job working in Fort McMurray, where she was employed at an oil sands mining project. She has said that she took the job just so that she could pay her substantial student loans.

It was during this time that she decided to publish several of the comics she had been writing inspired by history on the Web.

Kate started posting on katebeaton.com her new website in addition to posting on her blog on LiveJournal.

In December of the same year, she started publishing several comic strips based on historical themes that would become very popular. Some of these subjects had been suggested by several of her readers.

Between 2007 and 2018, she started writing “Hark! A Vagrant,” which would become her most popular webcomic. In 2008, she stopped posting her work on LiveJournal, preferring a new website that also took the name of the comic.

It was a work that had several themes and included historical figures such as Ada Lovelace and James Joyce. She sometimes threw in several characters from popular western fiction.

The work would go on to win several awards including the Outstanding Online Comic Ignatz Award in 2011. She has also been profiled in Comic Book Resources, Maclean’s, and Wired.

Her success was all the more impressive as she used to draw all her webcomic using Microsoft Paint during her lunch breaks.

At the height of the popularity of her webcomic, Kate Beaton’s website for “Hark! A Vagrant” got more than half a million visitors every month.

She gained a reputation for writing expressive and clean hand-drawn white and black comics, which were reposted and reblogged endlessly.

Readers particularly loved the wordless, splay-legged, and round pony that would ultimately inspire “Pinecone & Pony” on Apple TV and “The Princess and the Pony,” the children’s fiction book.

In 2014, started posting on her Tumblr account and a five-part series of her postings would become very popular.

It all began with a viral story of 500 ducks that died in a tailings pond. It would spark a lot of national discussion on the environmental impact of oil rigs on natural habitats.

Today her postcolonial and feminist retellings, reconsidering literary cannon and queering seem like which were her very early preoccupations seem like very accurate prophecies.

In the present, her style has been copied by many other artists across the world which is the most impressive endorsement an artist could ever hope to have.

Kate Beaton’s “Hark! A Vagrant” is a collection of literary and historically-minded comedy strips that range from bawdy toiletries and dry witticism. As a fan of both literature and history, it helps one to really appreciate Beatons creativity.
Some great bits in the novel include several strips where Beaton takes inspiration from “Nancy Drew” and goes on to extrapolate a plotline or scene based on the classic works.

In addition, she also includes a bunch of Canadian pop culture and historical references. What has also made this work exceptional are the commentaries she adds to select strips, which helps one ennoble themselves in the experience.

She tries as much as possible to pique her readers’ curiosity or at least educate them using her strips.

“Hark! A Vagrant” makes for a rare work that perhaps showcases what newspaper comics could have been, had they not been overrun with unfunny and uninspired comics for years.

Kate Beaton is an expert at making readers laugh and this work is very much worth readers’ money and time or whatever it takes to buy the book or borrow from a friend.

Kate Beaton returns in “Step Aside, Pops” another collection of comic strips from her website that is as inspired and funny as her first collection.

As is usually the case, the strips range from literary and historical references to riffs on old magazine/book covers, random bits of comedy, postcards, and posters.

She writes a hysterical iteration of the “Wuthering Heights” story that comes with Heathcliff the lunatic who is always scowling. It is weird how he gets to be in a demented romantic relationship with Cathy who cannot seem to get enough of him.
Another interesting story is “The Black Prince” in which there is a teen terror who often talks in a very weird and bizarre manner. Beaton also writes a hilarious story of how the US Founding Fathers go to an amusement park and a mall to hang out.
Beaton has also written a very pissed-of version of “Wonder Woman” that has to be one of the best versions of the character ever. Still, she has also written some great iterations of Reporter and Lois Lane.

In this work. Lois does her best trying to do her work, even though Clark keeps on barging in and asking if she would be interested in Superman’s secret identity.

Overall, it makes for a very good comic strip that would rival even the likes of DC and Marvel Comics, even with all their teams of writers.