The memoir opens in 2005 as Beaton has just graduated from Mount Allison University with a B.A. But the strengths that made Hark! A Vagrant such a success are still very much in evidence, and, in Ducks, her deft oscillations between the absurdity and the ordinary human reality of her stint working in and around Fort McMurray can be clearly traced back to her formative years as a humorist. Her new book, also from D&Q, represents a significant departure from her earlier work in theme, tone, and – at almost 500 pages of continuous narrative – length. Her economical and expressive linework, biting irony, hilarious anachronism, and a delicious sense of irreverence caught the attention of Montreal publisher Drawn & Quarterly, and Beaton’s comics collections landed on bestseller lists and garnered a host of awards in Canada and the U.S. Back then, Beaton worked in shorter formats – newspaper-style comic strips and the occasional page-long piece or short series on a recurring theme.
Chronicling her time in Northern Alberta, Ducks is a remarkable glimpse into the fraught and under-explored daily lives of the people who work in one of Canada’s most contentious industries.īeaton rose to prominence during the webcomics boom of the aughts thanks to the popularity of her hilarious comics, which riffed on topics like Canadian history, pop culture, feminism, and classic literature. More than a decade after the release of her first bestselling comics collection Hark! A Vagrant, Cape Breton cartoonist Kate Beaton returns with her first long-form graphic memoir, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands.
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