"I was told I make intelligent comics, and then I made a comic about a horse that pooped."
— Kate Beaton
Hark! A Vagrant is a largely history-based Webcomic by Kate Beaton best known for its historical comics, which are one-shots of varying length focusing on historical events or figures. There are occasionally other kinds of comics, including comics in which Beaton visits her younger self, a few comics about a pony called "Fat Pony", and a story about a sailor who meets a mermaid. There is little continuity and each comic is a standalone strip. Also, rather than use Alt Text, Beaton usually accompanies each comic with a short paragraph.
Marat spends all his time in the tub because he really likes baths.
"Sometimes? I pretend to be Neptune."
Also, her Nancy Drew comics, where she takes the covers to old books in the series and comes up with... alternate explanations for the scenes shown. Other characters are often shown worrying about Nancy's mental health.
Antiquated Linguistics: Consistently averted. No matter what time period the comic is set in, all characters use modern English (except in the strip namer comic, with Kate and the vagrant).
Spoofed in here (second comic), where a group of gangsters give a man the Black Spot, to which he responds "You've mixed up genres."
Also spoofed here (third comic), where an actual pirate comments on the Black Spot not being a real practice. The guy who gave it to him kills him anyway.
Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: The dark-haired Mystery Solving Teen loves his grandma. The Mystery Solving Teen with Blinding Bangs loves his grandma, too, but he doesn't look like a giant tit when he wears the things she makes for him.
Each one will get handsomer and handsomer until King James I
King James: (starry-eyed) Did that really happen
Shakespeare: Yes
Real Dreams Are Weirder: This strip. Calpurnia dreams that Caesar is going to be killed on the Ides of March. Caesar dreams about robes made of hot dogs.
Rule of Funny: The reason why various historical figures and fictional characters are shown saying/doing things they would never actually say/do.
Schedule Slip: The site has been going slowly since Beaton started work on the Hark! A Vagrant book and other projects. She still periodically posts quick doodles on her Tumblr, though.
Regarding "The Yellow Wallpaper", an early work of American feminist literature (and a Gothic horror story):
Protagonist: Doctor, there's a woman in the wallpaper. Doctor: That woman has a feminist agenda. Tell her to get in the wallpaper that's in the kitchen.
In another strip, a man finds out the book he's reading was written by a woman. He then drops the book and tells a random woman "Shame on you!"
Title Drop: In this comic, though it's more likely the website was named after that line. Interestingly, this strip was not contained in the book of the same name.
Toilet Humor: "Fat Pony" seems to be the outlet for this as shown here.
Viewers Are Geniuses: To an extent. Knowledge of European and North American history certainly helps, as the comic isn't going to explain the characters and events to you, but most of the time the comics are funny even if you don't know the history. (And at any rate, there's always The Other Wiki if you need a refresher... Hell, it's a webcomic, so you must be close to a search engine, right?)
Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: This comic on bad historical movies. As The Rant says, "No one would ever try to shoot a movie in Chaucer-y English like the 4th comic, and if they did they probably wouldn't know their way around the actual grammar if Chaucer himself had a Dummies book explaining it. That shit is hard!"
Your Mom: The "Your Wife" variation — Tycho's rude response to Kepler suggesting the possibility that the sun might orbit around the earth as opposed to him believing in the opposite.
is a largely history-based Webcomic by Kate Beaton best known for its historical comics, which are one-shots of varying length focusing on historical events or figures. There are occasionally other kinds of comics, including comics in which Beaton visits her younger self, a few comics about a pony called "Fat Pony", and a story about a sailor who meets a mermaid. There is little continuity and each comic is a standalone strip. Also, rather than use Alt Text, Beaton usually accompanies each comic with a short paragraph.
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