Available:*
Item Barcode | Collection | Call Number | Status | Item Holds |
---|---|---|---|---|
33607003051136 | Adult Nonfiction | 741.5 BEATON | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Six months on the New York Times bestseller list! Featured on 25 best of the year lists!
"Somewhere in my heart is a folder titled Things I Did Not Know I Wanted and it is full of Kate Beaton comics... Sharp, charming, and weird, Step Aside, Pops is a fine sampling of Beaton's work, and I can't recommend it enough." -- NPR
"Nobody's ever gotten so much comedy out of omitting punctuation." -- New York Times
Ida B. Wells, the Black Prince, and Benito Juárez burst off the pages of Step Aside, Pops: A Hark! A Vagrant Collection , armed with modern-sounding quips and amusingly on-point repartee . Kate Beaton's second D+Q book brings her hysterically funny gaze to bear on these and even more historical, literary, and contemporary figures. Irreverently funny and carefully researched, no target is safe from Beaton's incisive wit in these satirical strips.
Beaton began her infectiously popular web comic, Hark! A Vagrant, in 2007 and it quickly attracted the adoration of hundreds of thousands of fans. It was an unequivocal hit with critics and fans alike, topping best-of-the-year lists from E! , Amazon , Time , and more. Now Beaton returns with a refined pen, ready to make jokes at the expense of hunks, army generals, scientists, and Canadians in equal measure. With a few carefully placed lines, she captures the over-the-top evil of the straw feminists in the closet, the disgruntled dismay of Heathcliff, and Wonder Woman's all-conquering ennui. Step Aside, Pops is sure to be the comedic hit of the year: sharp, insightful, and very funny.
Author Notes
Kate Beaton was born and raised in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. After graduating from Mount Allison University with a double degree in History and Anthropology, she moved to Alberta in search of work that would allow her to pay down her student loans. During the years she spent out West, Beaton began creating webcomics under the name Hark! A Vagrant , quickly drawing a substantial following around the world.
The collections of her landmark strip Hark! A Vagrant and Step Aside, Pops each spent several months on the New York Times graphic novel bestseller list, as well as appearing on best of the year lists from Time , The Washington Post , Vulture , NPR Books , and winning the Eisner, Ignatz, Harvey, and Doug Wright Awards. She has also published the picture books King Baby and The Princess and the Pony .
Beaton lives in Cape Breton with her family.
Reviews (3)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 10 Up-In this rollicking follow-up to her Hark! A Vagrant (Drawn & Quarterly, 2011) comic strip collection, Beaton continues to highlight obscure and well-known bits of history, popular culture, and literature. Using a loose line in each strip, most of which contain five to 10 panels, and introductory comments, the creator parodies subjects as diverse as Nancy Drew, the Founding Fathers, Wuthering Heights, the French Revolution, and Wonder Woman. The humor is biting, and the satire may fly over some teens' heads, but jokes and punch lines will inspire young adults to inquire after the source material. Especially funny are the comics inspired by vintage postcards, book covers, and broadsides. The retellings of "The Lady of Shallott" and "Cinderella" and the cheeky upheaval of sexist superhero comic tropes lend a feminist bent to the collection. Vignettes about strong, independent women from history, such as Dr. Josephine Baker, Ida B. Wells, and Katherine Sui Fun Cheung offer much-needed spotlights on their important contributions. The black-and-white sketches, which border on caricature, reflect the fun, lackadaisical feel of the original webcomics but reinforce the satirical leanings of the work. This volume would be perfect for browsing, writing prompts, or as a tie-in for a unit on political cartoons. Spurts of colorful language and some nudity make this title more appropriate for mature readers. VERDICT A sardonically witty romp from a powerful female voice.-Shelley Diaz, School Library Journal © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
As the sequel to her bestseller Hark! A Vagrant, this collection-once again bringing together strips from Beaton's popular website-is a wonderful second installment. It offers her take on a variety of different historical, literary, and cultural institutions, usually by finding something absurdly idiosyncratic in them and taking this to its ridiculous and, indeed, hilarious conclusion. Whether it's a retelling of Cinderella that involves a night of weight lifting or an exploration of what the Lady of Shallot might have actually seen her knight doing when she looked out of her tall tower, Beaton has an uncanny ability to take the sacred and shake its foundations with the delightfully mundane. Her apparently "simple" art style uses a wide variety of sophisticated visual techniques that perfectly accompany the wit and humor of her prose. From Julius Caesar to The Secret Garden and from the late Romantics to Kokoro, Beaton knocks it out of the park, having a go at anything and everything with her razor-sharp wit. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Review
The cover and title of this book play on 19th-century cartoons depicting velocipeding women as shocking and inappropriate, but we'd say "AWESOME" declares Beaton (Hark! A Vagrant; The Princess and the Pony). This new collection from her popular webcomic of affectionate satire digs deeper and more savagely into gender politics (ersatz "feminists" who want to kill men; Wonder Woman's problems), racial/ethnicity issues (obstacles confronting African American journalist Ida B. Wells and Native American runner Tom Longboat), classic literature about stupid people (the Lady of Shalott espies -Lancelot-and he's relieving himself), and fairy tales (Cinderella gets a makeover complete with muscles from her fairy godmother, and she and Prince Charming work out together). Old favorites such as Peasant Comics and nutty interpretations of book covers reappear with new lunacies. The black-and-white drawings in ink and wash vary from cartoony to semirealism but always with elastic élan. VERDICT -Beaton's critical humor inspires epiphanies as well as giggles, making her a commentator to watch among millennials who speak to broader audiences. Fans of the author's earlier collections and other lovers of offbeat satire, high school and up, will love this as well. [See Q&A with the author, p. 62.]-M.C. © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.