Rec. #95: Hark! A Vagrant

What: Are you amazed and/or alarmed that it's taken me three months to spotlight Kate Beaton? You should be. Kate Beaton is a heroine of the web comics community. On her blog, Hark! A Vagrant, she specializes in Beaton-ized snapshots of history (Napoleon eating cookies, a dating show for Elizabeth I) that are as meticulously researched as they are irreverent. (Without the knowledge from the research, the irreverence wouldn't be so spot on.) She also gives us "younger self" comics, mystery solving teens, some general nonsense, comics about dead authors, and --- oh yeah --- a fat pony.

Representative comic (actually most are longer, but this gives you a taste):

You might not like it if: You find it criminally unfair that she can make squiggly lines that become perfectly nuanced facial expressions, while the squiggly lines you make just look like squiggly lines.

How to get it: Kate Beaton is all over the place, thank goodness. First, there's her blog. She's also on Twitter (@beatonna), and she often shares quick sketches there. Plus, there's a store where you can buy, among other things, prints of many of her comics and some excellent t-shirts. And also, she has a new book that will be released in September. You can pre-order it on Amazon.