#Boomtowns

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kate Beaton's "Ducks"

It’s been more than a decade since I began thrilling to Kate Beaton’s spectacular, hilarious snark-history webcomic “Hark! A Vagrant,” pioneering work that mixed deceptively simple lines, superb facial expressions, and devastating historical humor:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/03/23/hark-a-vagrant-the-book/

Beaton developed Hark! into a more explicit political allegory, managing the near-impossible trick of being trenchant and topical while still being explosively funny. Her second Hark! collection, Step Aside, Pops, remains essential reading, if only for her brilliant “straw feminists”:

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/09/15/step-aside-pops-a-new-hark-a-vagrant-collection-that-delights-and-dazzles/

Beaton is nothing if not versatile. In 2015, she published The Princess and the Pony, a picture book that I read to my own daughter — and which inspired me to write my own first picture book, Poesy the Monster-Slayer:

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/08/07/the-princess-and-the-pony-from-kate-hark-a-vagrant-beaton/

Beaton, then, has a long history of crossing genres in her graphic novels, so the fact that she published a memoir in graphic novel form is no surprise. But that memoir, Ducks: Two Years In the Oil Sands, still marks a departure for her, trading explosive laughs for subtle, keen observations about labor, climate and gender:

https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/ducks/

In 2005, Beaton was a newly minted art-school grad facing a crushing load of student debt, a debt she would never be able to manage in the crumbling, post-boom economy of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Like so many Maritimers, she left the home that meant everything for her to travel to Alberta, where the tar sands oil boom promised unmatched riches for anyone willing to take them.

Beaton’s memoir describes the following four years, as she works her way into a series of oil industry jobs in isolated company towns where men outnumber women 50:1 and where whole communities marinate in a literally toxic brew of carcinogens, misogyny, economic desperation and environmental degradation.

The story that follows is — naturally — wrenching, but it is also subtle and ambivalent. Beaton finds camaraderie with — and empathy for — the people she works alongside, even amidst unimaginable, grinding workplace harassment that manifests in both obvious and glancing ways.

Early reviews of Ducks rightly praised it for this subtlety and ambivalence. This is a book that makes no easy characterizations, and while it has villains — a content warning, the book depicts multiple sexual assaults — it carefully apportions blame in the mix of individual failings and a brutal system.

This is as true for the environmental tale as it is for the labor story: the tar sands are the world’s filthiest oil, an energy source that is only viable when oil prices peak, because extracting and refining that oil is so energy-intensive. The slow, implacable, irreversible impact that burning Canadian oil has on our shared planet is diffuse and takes place over long timescales, making it hard to measure and attribute.

But the impact of the tar sands on the bodies and minds of the workers in the oil patch, on the First Nations whose land is stolen and despoiled in service to oil, and on the politics of Canada are far more immediate. Beaton paints all this in with the subtlest of brushstrokes, a thousand delicate cuts that leave the reader bleeding in sympathy by the time the tale is told.

Beaton’s memoir is a political and social triumph, a subtle knife that cuts at our carefully cultivated blind-spots about industry, labor, energy, gender, and the climate. But it’s also — and not incidentally — a narrative and artistic triumph.

In other words, Beaton’s not just telling an important story, she’s also telling a fantastically engrossing story — a page-turner, filled with human drama, delicious tension, likable and complex characters, all the elements of a first-rate tale.

Likewise, Beaton’s art is perfectly on point. Hark!’s secret weapon was always Beaton’s gift for drawing deceptively simple human faces whose facial expressions were indescribably, superbly perfect, conveying irreducible mixtures of emotion and sentiment. If anything, Ducks does this even better. I think you could remix this book so that it’s just a series of facial expressions and you’d still convey all the major emotional beats of the story.

Graphic memoirs have emerged as a potent and important genre in this century. And women have led that genre, starting with books like Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (2006):

https://cbldf.org/banned-challenged-comics/case-study-fun-home/

But also the increasingly autobiographical work of Lynda Barry, culminating in her 2008 One! Hundred! Demons!:

https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/one-hundred-demons/

(which should really be read alongside her masterwork on creativity, 2019’s Making Comics):

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/11/05/lynda-barrys-making-comics-is-one-of-the-best-most-practical-books-ever-written-about-creativity/

In 2014, we got Cece Bell’s wonderful El Deafo:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/11/25/el-deafo-moving-fresh-ya-comic-book-memoir-about-growing-up-deaf/

Which was part of the lineage that includes the work of Lucy Knisley, especially later volumes like 2020’s Stepping Stones:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/09/enhanced-rock-weathering/#knisley

Along with Jen Wang’s 2019 Stargazing:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/25/stargazing-jen-wangs-semi-autobiographical-graphic-novel-for-young-readers-is-a-complex-tale-of-identity-talent-and-loyalty/

2019 was actually a bumper-crop year for stupendous graphic memoirs by women, rounded out by Ebony Flowers’s Hot Comb:

https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/hot-comb/

And don’t forget 2017’s dazzling My Favorite Thing is Monsters, by Emil Ferris:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/06/20/my-favorite-thing-is-monsters-a-haunting-diary-of-a-young-girl-as-a-dazzling-graphic-novel/

This rapidly expanding, enthralling canon is one of the most exciting literary trends of this century, and Ducks stands with the best of it.

[Image ID: The cover of the Drawn & Quarterly edition of Kate Beaton's 'Ducks.']

[racefortheironthrone]

Was looking at old photograph taken circa early 1880s of the same area where Johannesburg now stands and there's obsoletely nothing beyond plant life there (unlike even nearby Pretoria the local Sotho-Tswana peoples didn't have any settlements in present-day Johannesburg prior to the gold mining) and then a photograph taken circa late 1880 and it like million tents are there (maybe that's an exaggeration). Made me wonder about the last "overnight city" was founded in recent history?

This is a fascinating question!

It's true that the "boom town" phenomena occurs in the case of gold rushes - like California in 1849, West Australia in 1851, the Klondike in 1896 - or the construction of railroads or highways or the development of new factory towns or the like.

I would say that the most recent example of this phenomenon is the "new cities" built in China as speculative real estate developments premised around the need for affordable housing for manufacturing workforces, especially during the 2005-2011 housing bubble. In some years, these developments hit big and you get brand-new megacities out of nowhere.

In the past couple of years, with the slowdown in the Chinese economy and particular problems in the real estate sector, the fascinating phenomena of "ghost cities" (originally observed in 2006) where there are massive empty developments in various stages of construction just lying vacant has become more prominent, as developers run out of money or credit, or find it hard to attract industry and residents in a time of COVID lockdowns and the relative decline of Chinese manufacturing as a basis for urbanization.

[etakeh]

Watching a documentary about a trove of lost films discovered in a town in the Yukon, and this came up.

No commentary, just an interesting fact.

Anyway it's a good doc. No pesky narration. Just images and sound.

[biglisbonnews]

Ringwood Mining Historical Site in Ringwood East, Australia The eastern suburb of Ringwood is an area steeped in history, and it played a large part in the booming Australian mining industry in the late 1800s. In 1869, antimony was discovered incidentally when road metal was being extracted and this led to a surge in mining shafts being constructed in the area. The Ringwood Antimony Mining Company was set up and they were later joined by other companies looking to get involved in this profitable industry.  Antimony was used for many purposes including making pewter (a metal alloy), paint pigments, and pharmaceutical items. The mine operated until 1892 due to the economic recession which heavily impacted the industry and the demand for antimony. Visitors to Ringwood Lake can see a replica of the poppet head wheel, part of the frame at the top of the mineshaft, as well as a mineshaft and multiple informative signs and old photographs which give an insight into the industry which was pivotal in the industrial development of the area.  The site has undergone different periods of regeneration over the years and there was a replica construction of a miner's cottage which sat in the park until 2009, when it burned down. A commemorative plaque now sits at the former site. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/ringwood-mining-historical-site

[open-era]

California Gold Rush: Journeying West in Search of Riches

California Gold Rush: A timeless testament to human ambition and adaptability. A beacon of hope, it unleashed prosperity and innovation, shaping the Golden State's bright future. #CaliforniaGoldRush #GoldenOppotunity

In the heart of California’s rugged landscape, an irresistible siren call echoed through the canyons and valleys, drawing pioneers from every corner of the globe. The California Gold Rush, a euphoric chapter in human history, ignited a spark of relentless ambition that blazed across the Wild West. It was a riveting era of dreams forged in gold, where fortunes were won and lost, and the spirit of…

[wkzbomfq9hik]

Sporty legal age teenager cutie gets a sudden fuck soon after her workout Tittyfucked bigtits eurobabe gets plowed Danish Vintage Lesbian Threesome Sofie got a big load on her feet Dumb Asian Employee Anal Fucked By Huge BBC Esposa gostosa levando rola no swing Gay porn movie male sex The infamous Angel Kelly is back again for Grabando culo de estudiante 3 Muscle Women Fuck Their Toy Boy Cheating wife creampied by neighbor while husband at work

[itsatorchwoodthing]

it’s more like goof, in this scene in particular

[macfrog]

wish you were here | one shot

thank you lovely anon for this gorgeous request which felt like a huge mug of hot chocolate and a pair of socks fresh from the dryer to write. i hope you enjoy.

pairing: joel miller x fem!reader

summary: you and joel skip jackson’s annual holiday party in favor of some alone time. (not that kind you filthy animals it’s the HOLIDAYS)

warnings: fluff lmao, thirty-year age gap and u can stay mad, set around the holidays but no mention of christmas etc, nothing but love and two hints of sex. that's all. oh and no guitars were harmed in the making of this - joel canonically goes and gets the guitar after the fic ends. dw.

word count: 1.9k 

main masterlist | follow @macfroglets w notifs on to be the first to hear when i post 🤎

Jackson is alive with a thrumming heartbeat. Pulsing through the air, bumping gently against the quick-lying snow and filling the otherwise silent night. A steady, rhythmic heartbeat.  

A heartbeat which sounds a lot like Blue Monday, but a heartbeat nonetheless.

The holiday party is in full swing down in the Tipsy Bison. Seven o’clock ‘til late! on flyers plastered all over the commune for the last month. Tommy had tried relentlessly to convince Joel this morning on patrol – It’ll be a good night; You oughta come along, show face at least. At the same time, Maria was on your back about it in the stables.

Y’all hardly come to anything fun, she’d argued.

We come to stuff.

When’s the last time you came to anythin’?

We were – we were at Mike’s birthday dinner.

What – five months ago?

We like alone time.

Alone time? You’re never apart from one another.

Alone time – together.

Neither attempt had been successful. Tommy and Maria had exchanged a disheartened glance as the two brothers passed their horses to you on their return. Joel clipped your cheek, took his gloves off and fixed them onto your frozen hands before making off for home, a proud grin on his face. You’d held your own as well as he had: you two had a clear evening ahead.

He had lit and nurtured a fire, had made himself a coffee and heaped half a damn bag of tiny marshmallows into a hot chocolate for you, but when he’d come through to take his place on the couch, you were already stood out front.

It’s bitter out – a soft breeze, but a thick chill on its wings. The sky a washed gray, heavy clouds overhead. He slips outside, setting the mugs down on the table, and slings a blanket over your shoulders. Kisses the curve of your neck, scruff of his beard tickling your skin.

‘s freezing, pretty bird.

Then keep me warm, you whisper, turning into his arms. He steps back, settling into his chair, flicking his fingers for you to fall down into his wide lap.

You curl up against his torso, your head hooked beneath his jaw. Wonder how drunk Tommy is by now. What is it – nine?

His wrist lifts, moonlight gleaming in the reflection of his broken watch face. Just gone ten. I bet he’s on his ass already.

You giggle into his shirt, breathing in the scent of the pine trees, the smoke from stoking the fire inside, the bite of hot coffee. The echo of voices swelling in merry song turns your attention down the street – two figures hooked onto one another, stumbling through the powdered snow. Some slurred rendition of September melting into All Night Long before the smaller of the two tugs their partner off into a darkened house.

Joel laughs to himself, the bristle of his beard catching on your hair as he shakes his head.

You ask him softly, Will you play me something?

His breath soars, a cloud hot and pale white, past your temple and up into the pastel sky. Gets swallowed somewhere overhead by the wash of warmth from the porch light. He turns his mug until the owl faces the street, the bottom gnawing against the wooden armrest of his chair.

I’m serious.

What do you wanna hear?

That one you’re always practicin’. The plucking one.

Another rumble between your shoulder blades. His chest jolts with a solid laugh. The pluckin’ one.

You know the one.

I know the one.

Will you play it, if I go get the guitar?

Baby, his lungs nudge on your back as they fill, it’s late. We’ll wake the neighbors.

Everyone’s at the dance. C’mon.

And he can’t argue with that. The entire street lies dark, vacant. Yours is the only house with soft-glowing eyes, the muted orange of the fire flickering behind closed blinds. Two figures, tangled in a chair on the dim front porch; a hunting jacket around his shoulders, and his body around yours.

You tug on the blanket, wrapping it around your elbows as you stand. Just once. Play me it once.

Joel’s looking up at you, setting his mug down on the table. Play you it as many times as you want, pretty bird. Just – quietly.

There’s a spring in your step that drags another chuckle from Joel’s lips: the kind that drips like honey down your throat and warms the pit of your stomach – a sweet, comforting thing, a sound you swear was made purposefully for you. Divine and deliberate.

Like – all of him. Like the shape of your name in his mouth, the curl of his tongue as the sound surfs over it. Like the curve of his hand and the way yours so neatly molds into it.

The way it did the day he found you, crouched in the gray backroom of some butchers deep in the city, and took you all the way back to Jackson. Let you cling to him on the back of his horse; your weak arms around his waist, anchored by the heavy jacket he’d thrown over your back. Your ear between his shoulder blades. And that was that.

Fifty-six. One brown-turned-silver hair away from thirty years your senior. He still remembers before. Talks about movies, talks about computers. Talks about Sarah, when the sun hits the wall at a certain angle and he reckons he could see her standing right there, the soft shadow of her hair dark against the golden wall. When you make a joke and he laughs a ghostly sort of laugh, like he’s hearing the echo of her voice make the same quip three decades ago. He always says she would’ve loved you; you like to think he’s right.

He found you: a lonely little broken heart, and he pulled you to your feet with a rough palm against your own. Hands calloused only from years spent carving wood and pressing the hard strings of his guitar into the fretboard, and nothing else. No violence and no bloodshed; no survival or threat. Music, and patience, and kindness.

And maybe you found him, too, in the same sort of way: roughened up, awkward and messy stitches holding him together. Maybe the two of you nursed one another back to life; each brush of your hands in the dining hall and each meaningful glance while out on patrol sewing those wounds up a little tighter, a little safer.

He sits forward when you hold the instrument out, sweeping a broad palm down the slope of the body. Pinches the pegs one by one, twisting them while his thumb taps on each string.

Come here, he says, beckoning you forward with a flick of his chin. He taps on the seam of his jeans, widens his legs for you to curl up between them at his feet – the way you always do.

Your elbows hook over his thigh, ear pressed against the inside of his knee. Staring up, blinking slowly, eyes glazed with the cold and with the light and with love.

He plucks gently, slow at first. Letting the strings snap with a twang, vibrating enough that you feel the small rattle in your jaw. Your eyes fall closed, head rocking with the light tap of his heel on the porch. When you peer at him through your lashes, he’s watching the skilled movements of his fingers intently; as if he’s as much a spectator as you are – his body doing all of the thinking and working for him.

 So, he sings, and your stomach melts to a puddle, so you think you can tell –

Your eyes close again, the low rumble of his voice crisp in your ears. Like thunder, like the promise of something great and mighty. Something moving, something rolling and changing the landscape of your body, your mind and your soul. The lines between living and dying begin to blur, the seam tearing between this plain and the next.

Did they get you to trade – your lips parting to whisper the words with him – your heroes for ghosts?

His thumbnail dragging down the strings, his strong fingers flitting between chords. Like he was made to sit here, in the dead of night, and carve a space in the world for himself and his voice and for you – lain in the safe scope of his body, protected by his breadth and brawn and lulled by his sweet song.

His breadth and brawn – the parts of him which have kept him standing here. His skeleton, his muscle. But the thing that keeps you warm at night, buried side by side under a threadbare woolen sheet together, the thing that you link your arms around as he leads you home from the nights you dare to visit the Tipsy Bison: are his heart, his flesh, the gray-singed hair which falls in a featherlight wave over his forehead. The hair you sweep from his eyes when he’s on top of you, his hips cradled in yours, that all-encompassing feeling of every part of him filling every part of you.

It all feels that way. The warmth of him, the feeling of being wrapped around him. Hooked around his body, bones intertwined. Absorbing one another, his words breathing life into yours, slowly growing louder and braver with each pluck and strum of music.

We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year.

Your makeups entangling, ribcages locking together, flesh meeting flesh and hair twisting until one day, Tommy will come looking for his brother and find the two of you here on your porch, your arms still draped over Joel’s thigh and his fingers still mid-song. Stuck, alone, together.

What have we found? Joel looks down to you as though asking the question – his eyebrows raised – and you reply, a dumb smile across your lips, The same old fears, and then, together –

Wish you were here.

He plays until his fingers must start to hurt, the way he clenches and loosens his fist. Setting the guitar against your chair, hands hooking under your arms to pull you back up to him.

That one your favorite? he asks, the cold tip of his nose circling yours.

You nod. Only when you sing it.

I like the way we sound together.

You smile, shrinking into his chest again, your fingers surfing back and forth on the worn shirt. I like the way we do a lot of things together.

His hands slip beneath the fabric of your shirt, massaging your waist. He dots a trail of light, damp kisses along your forehead, dipping to your temple, the angle of your cheek until your jaw lifts and his lips are against yours, his tongue parting to lick purposefully at yours.

I love you, pretty bird, he whispers, the words falling sweet and fair on your tongue.

You take a moment to let them seep into your skin. ‘s the first time you’ve ever said that, you tell him.

Joel smiles. He knows. But you knew it already, he counters.

You know, too. Mhm.

Alright, he groans, slipping his hands under your thighs and hoisting you up to his height, bedtime.

It’s only ten, you complain, wrapping the blanket around his shoulders as he carries you inside. It’s too early to sleep – Joel.

Didn’t say we were goin’ to sleep, he mumbles, kicking the door shut.

[tampire]

Landy Cannon as Root in LEXX Season 3 Boomtown Episode

[goatpaste]

Hey what's up, if you don't mind me asking what do some of your OC stands do?? I think they're all really cool and I'm curious! Btw wonderful art!!!

Honestly i dont have an awnser for all of them, and some of these I half ass made as i was going with these lol

im not very good at the power selecting part of creating stands lol

but I liked the excuse to draw them <3

[wynsvre]

you ever watch a scene that actively re-writes your brain chemistry while you're watching it and you know you're going to remember the scene for the rest of your life forever and ever

[vox-anglosphere]

The explosive growth of Vancouver in the 20th century in pictures

[popfizzles]

📂 for Axel!

He's kept his word about "never going first again".

At this point, it isn't so much a commentary on his cowardice (which he has mostly grown our of), but a commentary on his stubbornness.

He'll hold doors for others, and trail behind when walking in a group. He plays it off as "watching their six" :)

[hey-imma-fangirl]

Random Doodles I did in between letting the paint dry on my wall lmao

Idk what possessed me to draw some of these, but here we are lol

Roxy belongs to @demonangelgirl134

Joe Java belongs to @marshmallow-biscuit-blog

The boomtown boys/gals belong to @fizzypopsoda-comics

[discoring]

George Michael, Bob Geldof, Sting and Simon Le Bon for Band Aid ★

[80s-song-smackdown]

80 New Wave Tournament Side A