The Comicon Advent Calendar 2022: Day 5 – Kate Beaton’s Headed Home For Xmas…

Welcome once more to The Comicon Advent Calendar for 2022, a day-by-day celebration of Christmas comics, today focusing on the wonderful work of Kate Beaton.

Over the years, Kate Beaton’s made some incredible things, starting with webcomics under the Hark! A Vagrant name, swiftly followed by adoration from readers for the collections Hark! A Vagrant and Step Aside, Pops, which won all the awards. She’s subsequently published the picture books King Baby and The Princess and the Pony. Beaton lives in Cape Breton with her family. Right now of course, you should either reading your own copy of her latest incredible book, Ducks: Two Years In The Oil Sands, or buying multiple copies as perfect Christmas presents. Ducks tells of her life pre-comics and her time working in the oil sands of Alberta’s oil rush and the culture shock, harsh realities, and trauma that she has to undergo.

Anyway, that’s for Christmas future reading for you – get it as a present for everyone you know. Right now, it’s tales of Beaton’s Christmas past – she’s been making various Christmas comics for many, many years, back in the Hark A Vagrant days.

But here’s one of my favourites, a tale of heading home for Christmas and all the hunkering down in heart of the family for the holiday period – and all the inevitable madness of everyone’s families!

You can find Beaton’s Christmas tales on Twitter, but perhaps better to experience them on her Tumblr, and here’s the link to December 2013, from whence these…