From The Best Of 2022 List
It’s the little things that catch your attention, sometimes. Case in point, a tweet of three words and one link from Kate Beaton t’other day:
First book announcement
That book would be Ducks, an expansion of sketch comics in longish installments over the years, and long planned to be a book. Book plans get put to the side for good reasons¹ and tragic², but there was never a question that Ducks would see the light of day.
I am looking forward to this book as I always look forward to Kate’s work, because my favorite of her work is always the next. I’m also dreading this book a little, because it tells the story of a time and a place that’s uniquely toxic — toxic to the land, toxic to the souls of the men working there, and particularly toxic for the women who are just trying to do a job surrounded by men with toxicity in their souls.
There are bits of the original five-part story that put chills down my spine and not in a good way. There’s pain tied up in the oil sands for just about everybody that passed through there, I’ll warrant — and for those without that pain, I would steer well away because I fear they’re broken in a dangerous way. Ducks is at the top of my reading list for fall 2022, because it will be by turns wonderful, painful, and searingly honest.
That’s what Kate does, and we owe it to her to read the story she brings us and not look away when the painful comes to the fore. Parts of that story are going to hurt; Ducks is asking us to bear witness, and to resolve to make a world where the hurt is less in the future.
Ducks is due from Drawn & Quarterly in Fall 2022. I’m putting it on your must-buy list now.
Spam of the day:
Spammers don’t get to share the day with Kate.
_______________
¹ A wedding, a baby, a second baby. Some joyous occasions for Kate Beaton since 2014.
² We love you still, Becky, because our friend loved you so. Rest peacefully and know you will not be forgotten.
The above comments are owned by whoever posted them. The staff of Fleen are not responsible for them in any way.