Drawn and Quarterly to Collect Kate Beaton’s ‘Hark! A Vagrant’

Following a successful stint of self-publishing with her Never Learn Anything From History TPB, Kate Beaton's lauded (and read by more than half a million unique audience members every month online) Hark! A Vagrant has found a new printed home in North America via Drawn and Quarterly.

A hardcover collection of both new and already-online content is set for a Fall 2011 release, reportedly packing in all the historical, literary and pop culture insights that've made Beaton's work so revered by fans - and publishers like The New Yorker.D+Q's Editor-in-Chief, Acquiring Editor and Publisher Chris Oliveros had this to say about Beaton and the upcoming H!AV release:

"To say that the meteoric rise of Kate Beaton's popularity is nothing short of a modern-day cartooning tour-de-force is not hyperbole. Her comics revolve around characters and situations drawn from history and classic fiction. And yet, they are utterly contemporary. With their incisive humor and intelligence, they have captured the attention of a world wide audience. We are extremely honored to publish Hark! A Vagrant in book format."

When CA spoke with Beaton back in October, the creator discussed the pros and cons of self-publishing, her evolving cartooning skills and even mentioned that she'd turned down a few publishers at that point. Still, Beaton seemed excited about the possibility of creating a graphic novel under the right circumstances:

Yeah, and I can't take off a year from webcomics to do a graphic novel. People are very fickle, and if you're not giving them constant fresh entertainment they'll forget about you. And they'll stop paying your bills... Once you lose an audience it's hard to get one back; that's the general consensus. I mean, John Allison stopped Scary Go Round and started Bad Machinery, and numbers dropped because people were invested in that one thing and it went away. And I think Bad Machinery is one of the best webcomics out there.

There's a lot of things to consider, and I'm still pretty new, so I don't want to go too far. And if I do something different, or interesting, it will be within print, because I'm not comfortable with the idea of relying on a webcomic for years and years, knowing that your paycheck isn't really guaranteed. People could lose interest in you, or what you're doing, or you could lose interest in what you're doing and not want to do it anymore and not have an audience follow you. It's a lot of things to consider.

Fans will definitely be hoping that this D+Q release is the beginning of Beaton reaching her print goals.

[Via The Comics Reporter]