If your reaction when thinking of graphic novels is ‘just for kids’, or ‘glorified comic book’, then this book will put those pejoratives to rest. This memoir of Beaton’s two years in the oil fields of western Canada is definitely not a children’s book. Beaton’s monochromatic palette of images brings nuance and subtle inference to her text. Her dialogue is intimate and honest, yet some of her silent images speak loudest.
Beaton needed to pay off her student loan and a degree in art didn’t come with immediate solutions. With few opportunities in Nova Scotia, she travelled from Canada’s east coast to remote Alberta. At the time of her employment in the early 2000s, the oil fields were oppressively male. Being a female onsite meant being ogled, talked to and talked about demeaningly.
Ducks poses a philosophical question: is men’s true nature the sexually aggressive behaviour at camp, or is it what they lovingly display at home with their families?
Beaton’s images seem simple, but these clean greyscale lines evoke emotional depths. The narrative describing the two rapes she suffered while there will be described as ‘brave’ – and it is – but that bravery came at a significant cost to her … not to her rapists. This extraordinary book needs to be read and read again.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kate Beaton was born in Nova Scotia, took a history degree in New Brunswick, paid it off in Alberta, worked in a museum in British Columbia, then came to Ontario for a while to draw pictures, then Halifax, and now New York. Maybe the moon next time, who knows.
She is married to Morgan Murray, a writer whose debut novel Dirty Birds was published in 2020. She has two children. After living in New York and Toronto, Beaton now lives in Nova Scotia with her family.
Beaton published her webcomic, Hark! A Vagrant, from 2007 to 2018. She moved her work from LiveJournal to her new website, also titled Hark! A Vagrant, in May 2008. Its subjects included historical figures, such as James Joyce and Ada Lovelace, or fictional characters from Western literature. In several comics, Beaton caricatured herself, past and present. Beaton has a simple artistic style, with particular attention to detail paid to her characters’ facial expressions; her skill at comic pacing has also been noted.Hark! A Vagrant won the 2011 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Online Comic.
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