So say you are sitting watching the news, and they drop a knowledge bomb on you about some historical figure having something to do with today’s troubles and tribulations. If you are like me 84% of the time you think “WHO in the WHERE did WHAT…WHEN? And WHY??” That is where Ms. Kate Beaton can set you straight, with JOKES and COMICS! This helps me, because I can usually only remember things that are funny.
All you ever need to know about Musashi.
Kate is a comic artist from Novia Scotia, currently livin’ it large in Ontario. She tempers her unfailing Canadian politeness by dropping the occasional f-bomb, not to mention the s-bomb and once even the ever-controversial x-bomb, but still does it so charmingly even the Queen Mother herself could not take offense.
Seriously, who doesn’t love the Queen Mum?
Subjects range from those crazy sexy Tudors to dirty old man James Joyce to sexy celibate science genius Nikola Tesla to Fat Ponies. While her usual medium is pencil and pen, recently more shaded comics and colors have been showing up. They’re all nicely rendered; it’s truly the expressions get you.
I normally do not like horses but I LOVE Fat Pony (Click to Embiggen)
Every once in a while we get very lucky, and Kate does some hourly comics. These provide an interesting look into her day-to-day life, which is just as fascinating and hilarious as her scripted comics. In the same vein are her “Younger Self” comics, where Little Kate comes back and has talks with today’s Kate. I’ve never read one where I didn’t laugh and tear up at the same time. Stupid Kate Beaton, making me feel my feelings.
Little Amber would not even talk to me, she’d just read a book (Click to Embiggen)
You can follow Kate all over the internet at her website (Hark! A Vagrant), Twitter and LiveJournal. If you live in Novia Scotia or New Brunswick you can catch Kate as the Ease On Down the Road Artist in Residence at her alma matter Mount Allison University from January 21 to February 18. Several items by Kate are available to clothe your body and smarten up your brain through Topatoco, an awesome online retailer.
I am going to do you a favor and warn you: DO NOT LOOK UP THESE LETTERS
(All images from Hark! A Vagrant’s archive: Musashi, Queen Mum, Pony Hitman, Younger Self Advent, James Joyce Is Going To Corrupt You All)
Copyright Adweek.com
Once upon a time a quiet, but slightly mad, Welsh illustrator met a loud, but extremely mad American journalist and a legend was born. One horse race, a drug-fueled drive from Las Vegas to California, several wrecked hotels, many wrecked minds and countless destroyed mimeograph machines forged the lifelong friendship of Ralph Steadman and Hunter S. Thompson.
Steadman’s slightly acerbic satirical doodles at “Punch” and “The Daily Telegraph” in the UK had gained him a respectable, if small, following amongst the liberal readers and critics, but it wasn’t until he snagged a commission from “Scanlan’s” to illustrate Thompson’s piece on the infamous Kentucky Derby in 1970 that his surreal and twisted scratchings came to life.
Copyright Ralph Steadman
“This man had an impressive head chiseled from one piece of bone,” recalled Steadman later. “and the top part was covered down to his eyes by a floppy-brimmed sun hat. His top half was draped in a loose-fitting hunting jacket of multi-coloured patchwork. He wore seersucker blue pants, and the whole torso was pivoted on a pair of huge white plimsolls with a fine red trim around the bulkheads. Damn near 6-foot-6 of solid bone and meat holding a beaten-up leather bag across his knee and a loaded cigarette holder between the arthritic fingers of his other hand.”
Thompson’s gonzo style of journalism – putting himself at the heart of any story and relaying his experiences of the moments in a dark stream of consciousness – held a mirror up to Steadman’s crazed artistic sensibilities and made him look ever deeper into his own nightmare visions of the world.
Copyright Ralph Steadman
The spray and ink blot style of illustration was not a new thing. From Ronald Searle’s grubby little prep school boys of St. Custard’s to Gerald Scarfe’s cruel caricatures and around Quentin Blake’s whimsical drawings for Roald Dahl, the calculated mistake of splashed black ink had always been a feature of satirical portraiture.
Steadman turned it into an art form with elements of collage and touches of fine art in amongst the savagery. He’s won many prestigious design and illustration awards, worked with other authors, done graphics for companies and records and written his own novels. Yet it’s his work with Thompson that fuels the legend to ever-greater heights: bats and rabid dogs, bleak desert landscapes composed of twisted telegraph poles and infinite perspective lines, bloated bureaucrats with gaping mouths and US matrons with cruel features and monstrous bodies.
Copyright Ralph Steadman
And it’s his drive and creative zeal, even at the age of 73, which sets him apart. “I must have a feeling that: ‘Oooh I’m really excited about this!’ The most depressed times I have is when I just don’t wanna do anything. A living hell is not being creative, being utterly devoid of any creative impulse whatsoever.”
Check out the work of Ralph Steadman at his official website
Read his excellent autobiography
Despite a sea of failed series attempts, here is a new attempt: PEOPLE YOU SHOULD KNOW. I will feed you, the curious creative person, another creative person who you should be aware of. Perhaps you will find inspiration or a kindred soul. I CAN ONLY HOPE THAT THIS EXPRESSED HOPE COMES INTO FRUITION.
On the topic of FRUIT (applause, applause), this pivotal inaugural edition features Ignatz award-winning MINTY LEWIS. After discussing my recent foray into comic books, my roommate lent me PS Comics. It’s glorious! Irrefutably whimsical, PS Comics is a compilation of 14 comics that explore relationships and loneliness…through terriers and fruits. And sometimes salt shakers. This cast may seem absurd, but Minty’s characters are excellent vehicles of human emotion. The stories are enriched with depth and insight (Minty gives dating advice through the story of a Salt and Sugar shaker romance), and encourage you to reflect upon daily interactions with others.
A list of other Minty items is available here. I highly recommend Papercutter issue ten, which has the lovely Minty back cover below. NOTE: If you ever visit my apartment, expect to see a framed copy of this image very soon.
Note: Top image background is from PS Comics, comic excerpts from (clockwise) “Yorkig Schoolmates,” “‘Me’ Time,” “Salt & Sugar,” and “Bitter Fruit” (I feel your pain, Pear.), bottom image from Papercutter issue ten.
