Footrot Flats by Murray Ball
“The New Zealand-born cartoonist Murray Hone Ball (born 1939 in Feilding in the Manawatu) has become known for his Stanley the Palaeolithic Hero, Bruce the Barbarian and the long-running Footrot Flats comic series. In 2002 Ball became an officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) for his services as a cartoonist.
In 1976 Ball first published a strip called Footrot Flats in Wellington’s afternoon newspaper, The Evening Post. The strip follows the adventures of a working sheep-dog called (if anything) “Dog” or “The Dog”, his owner Wal Footrot and the other characters, human and animal, that they encounter or associate with.
Ball expresses Dog’s thoughts in thought-bubbles, though he clearly remains “just a dog” (rather than the heavily anthropomorphised creatures sometimes found in other comics or animation). Dog also has alter-egos including ‘The Grey Ghost’.
Ball’s Footrot Flats has appeared in syndication in international newspapers, and in over 30 published books. Footrot Flats inspired a stage musical, a theme-park and New Zealand’s first feature-length animated film, Footrot Flats: The Dog’s Tale (1986). Footrot Flats characters include Wal, Dog, Cooch, Cheeky Hobson, Aunt Dolly, Horse, Charlie, Major, Jess and the Murphy family of Irish and Hunk and Spit.
Footrot Flats features several remarkable traits: its expansive created-universe, complete with ancillary characters, things and places; the fact that the characters slowly but perceptibly age and mature throughout the twenty-year run of the comic; and the gradual encroachment of political themes over the years (particularly environmentalism and gentle parodies of feminism).
Ball has said he has always wanted his cartooning to have an impact. “The heart of a cartoon is the idea, an artist can create a painting, hang it on the wall and be satisfied with what he has achieved even if no-one else sees it. In cartooning you must get a human reaction to the idea. The task of the cartoonist is to translate his idea into a drawing that will have impact”.
