It was easier to stick out when the same people put their art projects on the wall. I loved that identity, and it was what I wanted to do. I was tagged as the one who could draw early on. When did you start developing that identity as an artist? I was “Becky’s Sister,” I didn’t have a name. My older sister was probably the most popular girl at the school, so I was also kind of in her shadow all the time. People knew me as smart and as an artist. I had friends, but I could have sat at any table without fully belonging to any of them. KATE BEATON: I was one of those kids who was neither popular nor unpopular. Her latest collection of comics, Step Aside, Pops, published by Drawn and Quarterly, features the founding fathers getting stuck in an amusement park, and fascinating people-largely left out of our history textbooks-who are just waiting for us to become obsessed with them.ĪNNA FITZPATRICK: What were you like in high school? Hark! A Vagrant taught me a version of history full of vibrant characters and stories I hadn’t learned at school. There was Queen Elizabeth I and her giant neck ruffs and Nikola Tesla, the Dreamboat Scientist. I never really paid attention in history class (it was boring memorizing all those dates and names of people I couldn’t tell apart), but as I poked around her website, I started to read comics about historical figures. Kate Beaton’s web comic Hark! A Vagrant, includes a strip about Jane Austen that made me spit coffee all over my dorm room the first time I read it.
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