I've long been a fan of Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant, a webcomic series devoted to historical bromance, apathetic mystery solving teens, and the misadventures of a doltish Nancy Drew. Her take on Wonder Woman is quintessential, rendered as a chain-smoking Cher who couldn't possibly be bothered to rescue your house cat. Earlier this year, she provided shorts and a cover for Marvel's Strange Tales II, bridging her own sensibilities with that of a mainstream she admits sort of baffles her. I think back on a blog post in which she recounts a trip to a thrift store. A male friend finds a Transformer toy and is overcome with genuine bliss. She realizes he's not exuding a single particle of irony radiation, and looks on with bewilderment. The same weird reverence giddiness some of us reserve for Grimlock or Lion-O or, sure, Superman, she has for the Curies or the Bronte sisters, and maybe especially for obscure Canadian legislators. And that's what makes her outlook, and by extension her comics, so insightful and entertaining.
This week, she unloaded a series of Lois Lane strips. And even as she reiterates her lack of experience with superhero comics in the coinciding blog post, she absolutely gets the frustrating history of Lois Lane. A vibrant woman with pluck and ambition constantly thwarted by an overbearing, if well-meaning overgrown boy scout.
For several more, hit up Hark! A Vagrant.
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What I love most about these strips of Lois is that Kate drew the golden age version and not just a typical woman figure. Always hilarious stuff by her.
I love this SO much!!
This just made my day so much better.
This might be my favourite Beaton comic book strip… either this or sexy batman!
Ordering print… right… now!
Chopin and Liszt was H!AV strip:
http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=302
man, those were hilarious!
This was bliss. Thanks for sharing!
Okay, I want that Lois Lane Girl Reporter series now.
It seems something right outta the Minx Line.
Oh Minx.. how I miss thee…
Oh god not HER again. Although I usually have no problems seperating an artist from their work I must say her twitter persona had SEVERELY hindered my ability to actually enjoy her work. Thus, taking over-saturation of high quality creative webcomics into mind I had moved on not too long ago.
Her work is fine, so long as you can ignore her man-bashing on twitter. Otherwise choice words become hard to shake off.
I don’t know if I would say she totally gets her
“I can’t lie to you, my readers. I do not know a heck of a lot about the superhero comic universe, but I love love love Lois Lane. Was it growing up in the 90’s and watching Lois and Clark?”
@ericmci To be fair, that’s not the limit of her experience with the character. This set has more to do with the old serials, television shows, and Lois Lane covers that came decades before. She gets the plight of the character from the old days, is what I’m saying.
I see the value in the comic.
But I think there’s a lot to argue here that’s not the Lois that most would recognize and superman as a superdoofus who’s always bothering her is a completely different take.
An intersting one- but to my mind not Lois.
but to each their own.
it’s fun enough.
It’s not a modern interpretation of Lois. Did you think I was actually suggesting that? She gets what Lois represents in the history of comics. It’s even drawn in an antiquated style. That Lois and that Clark DID exist in the Lois Lane books of a bygone era. It’s the kind of thing writers of the character are constantly trying to outrun. So it’s an omnipresent element of her legacy.