I’ve been reading the webcomic Hark, a vagrant for years, now. Written by the amazing Kate Beaton, the comic is a nerdy melding of history, literature, and plenty of randomness. It’s also hilarious, and has spawned a book. Unfortunately, the latest update teases of a hiatus, if not a complete departure from the webcomic world. Cue my panic.
Some of my favorite of Hark, a vagrant’s updates were, naturally, the ones about Latin American history. If this is going to be Kate Beaton’s departure from her creation I wanted to pay tribute to the hilariousness that is her treatment of Juarez and Bolivar.
“In the regular world, Maximilian would be a bad guy, but you really want to like the fella. As far as puppet rulers go, he may be in a club of his own for wanting to do a good job. If you want your country run by Don Quixote that is. Juarez is a similarly tough nut to crack, but I suppose coming from Poverty to President and trying to save your country from a European takeover will make a man a bit serious about the whole thing. Maybe together they could have governed the country like some sort of ultimate odd couple.”
Read the rest of the Juarez and Maximilian comic here.
“Sucre was Bolivar’s right hand man for sure (matching hairdos and everything baby), but I think he had a much different approach to leadership and I really wonder how different the outcome of the Spanish American wars of independence would have been if hadn’t been assassinated just as he was poised to be Bolivar’s obvious successor. I am definitely no expert in this area, but perhaps he would have had more success keeping the whole thing together the way Bolivar intended.”
Read more here.