Kate Beaton on Creating the Best Graphic Novel of 2022

In the summer of 2016 I presented the book to Drawn and Quarterly.

It took me a year to finish it. I drew it for a long time. There were a few stops along the way. I lost my sister to cancer when I was a child. The book has a picture ofBecky in it. When I wasn't working on it, it was on my mind. It was helpful, but it was the way it was.

Is now the right time to tell this story compared to last year? Is it a case of you being more prepared to handle it now?

I was in my studio when I was compelled to draw out those comics. At the time, it was just something I was driven to do for their own sake, and as I was doing it, you could see the bigger picture. It was clear to me that this was a book I would make.

I couldn't do it correctly then. I was working on a picture book and didn't want to leave Hark a vagrant immediately. I began winding down to it.

The way it is is something that sticks with me. The experience of working in the oil sands dehumanizes everyone regardless of how they think they are responding to it. Was that attitude you have always had in this situation, or was it something you looked back on?

I've had it for a long time. I didn't come back to think that everyone was perfect. I lived with a lot of people. I can see what I'm looking at even when it's not good. Even if it's painful.

I have had many years to think about it, too, and I am sure that has made a difference in the way I see things. You care about the people around you.

I didn't know what the oil sands were or what working there was like. The book has a lot of information in it.

Readers won't know much about the oil sands. You might only have a sense of it being a place that is big and ponderous if you don't have a connection to it.

I didn't know a lot about it when I arrived there, but the reader is dropped into those shoes to learn as I learn what they are looking at. A gradual education works out like it did for me.