Kate Beaton's Ducks: Her story to tell

At one point in Ducks, Kate Beaton's terrific autobiographical graphic novel about her life working in the oil sands industry, she has the chance to talk about her story to a reporter. She's given the chance to tell the world of the blatant sexism, misogyny and outright threats that undermine her desolate workplaces. But she pulls back. 

The journalist who is after the story obviously wants the most salacious angle, and there's so much more to it than that. It's a societal issue, one that is far too big and complex to fit into any one article, no matter how noble the intentions. A giant heartfelt graphic novel like this barely gets there, but it does get there.

Ducks is a wonderful book - the supreme comic timing of Beaton's comic strip work is still there, but she also has a larger and no less impeccable timing for a big, chunky story. Full of tiny anecdotes that build into a complex tapestry of that kind of life, in that kind of place. It picks at the guilt of people who want to save the planet, but still need to pay off their student debts; and finds fun and laughter in the darkest months.

It's also beautifully drawn. There is the strange beauty of the industrial site, the brutalism of necessity in the harshest of environments - some of the landscape work is truly outstanding. And she still does the best bug-eyed incredulity in comics.

And behind it all, driving the story, is the tiny hypocrisies and total dickishness of the patriarchal society that build up to a painful roar of inequality. Some of the men she works with will be kind and courteous one day, and irredeemable assholes the next, and somehow it's her fault.

It's unlikely to have changed much in the 20 years since Beaton worked the oil sands, because society hasn't changed that much, and her tale is depressingly contemporary. 

Stories this big and complicated, they move slowly, and nothing moves slowly than dumb fuckin' men.