The book took around a year to draw, but Ducks was more than a decade in the making. The foundation of the book arrived in 2014, as a five-part webcomic, documenting her time working in the Alberta oil sands. Fresh out of college, she took a job at the mining site in an effort to pay off her student loans. While the work follows her experience, the story paints a much broader picture, shining a light on the industry’s impact on workers, the indigenous people who live near the site and unaddressed issues of personal safety and assault. It offers another side of an artist who rose to prominence through her online historical strip, Hark, A Vagrant, present a warm and thought picture of what a comic memoir can accomplish.

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