Comics on Prose: Eight Graphic Novels on the Art of Storytelling

What happens when a story told in one medium echoes the storytelling conventions of a different one? Comics are particularly well-suited for this: they incorporate elements of other storytelling mediums, while retaining their own narrative devices and techniques. What follows is a look at eight distinct works that evoke other methods of telling stories–literature, radio, art, television–while remaining distinctly (and proudly) comics. Expanding the boundaries of one medium while referencing another is no easy task; these eight books carry it […]

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Historical Comics, Pulp Covers, and “Stories You Just Don’t Know”: An Interview With Kate Beaton

This month brings with it the release of Step Aside, Pops, the second collection of Kate Beaton’s excellent comic Hark! A Vagrant. (I wrote about the book for Paste.) The comics contained within range from inspired riffs on Nancy Drew to windows into history to a memorably irreverent adaptation of Wuthering Heights. I’ve been an admirer of Beaton’s work for years, and talked with her via email about the new book.

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