Kate Beaton has become a Web comic superstar with her hilarious look at historical and pop culture tropes from Julius Caesar to Gatsby. Hark! A Vagrant is a newly expanded collection of her witty, literate comics.

[Beaton's comics] are witty reinventions of literary and historical figures navigating modern times . . . A high-minded version of The Far Side that is at once of-the-moment and timeless.

Simply put, this is the most well-drawn, funniest comic that I've read in a while.

[Beaton's] neat linework and terrific grasp of simple caricature and facial expression sells a lot of the best strips, including Sasaki Kojiro meeting an undignified end, Jane Austen and Nikola Tesla being pestered by their fans, and Lord Byron muttering 'Bitches, man' to a grieving Percy Bysshe Shelley.

This is that rarest combination of literate irony and devastatingly funny humor.

[F]unny, clever, and sneakily instructive along the way.

An adult and difficult story but [accompanied by] very simple black and white illustrations, comic book style, and it is exceptionally powerful...show the amazing power and depth that can come from a literary story shown through words and images

The magic of Marjane Satrapi's work is that it can condense a whole country's tragedy into one poignant, funny scene after another.

Persepolis is a stylish, clever and moving weapon of mass destruction.

Marjane Satrapi's books are a revelation. They're funny, they're sad, they're hugely readable. Most importantly, they remind you that the media sometimes tell you the facts but rarely tell you the truth. In one afternoon Persepolis will teach you more about Iran, about being an outsider, about being human, than you could learn from a thousand hours of television documentaries and newspaper articles. And you will remember it for a very long time.

I cannot praise enough Marjane Satrapi's moving account of growing up as a spirited young girl in revolutionary and war-time Iran. Persepolis is disarming and often humorous but ultimately it is shattering.

Throughout, there are magnificent feats of connectivity, startlingly complex internal monologues that unfold with perfect simplicity… I haven’t encountered a book about being an artist, or about the punishing entanglements of mothers and daughters, as engaging, profound or original as this one in a long time.

Lively, fresh and expressive…humane, complex and beautiful.

Don’t let the cartoons fool you, this is an exciting and intelligent book and, at many points, highly moving. It doesn’t just tell Alison’s story, Are You My Mother? allows to you to think about your own.

Find everything this author has written. Every jot she makes on the paper enriches the baroque, painful, exhilarating story she has to tell.

It’s first and foremost funny, using graphical and verbal tricks to express the psychological dramas of an American household.

[Sacco’s] ability to cram in detail is extraordinary. And it is the details that linger.

When stretched to its 24ft length in the Saga Magazine office, we pored over it for ages. We predict you will want to do the same.

About Joe Sacco’s The Great War, one can write only essays or short, ecstatic sentences... A beautiful accordion-book, it unfolds on the Western Front, with all its monotony and misery: simple, but intricate; wordless, but vocal; brutal, but beautiful. A masterpiece of quietly affecting numbers, the thousands of lines, dots, and crosses that demarcate the thousands of lives, deaths, and crises.

The detail in this work is phenomenal, capturing the aloof generals, death in the trenches, and the wounded... [Sacco] makes visceral one of the bloodiest days in history.

Wordless and brilliant.

Sometimes words and photographs are not enough… [An] astounding book.

A unique and unforgettable experience.

A meticulous visual depiction.