Murray Hone Ball (born 1937) is a New Zealand cartoonist. He was born in Feilding in the Manawatu, and is best known for his Stanley the Palaeolithic Hero, Bruce the Barbarian and the long-running Footrot Flats comic series. In 2002 he was created officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) for his services as a cartoonist. Cartoonist Jack Elrod at work. ... Feilding is a town in the Manawatu-Wanganui region of the North Island of New Zealand. ... Manawatu is a district in the Manawatu-Wanganui region in the North Island of New Zealand. ... The very first edition of Footrot Flats released in 1978. ... The New Zealand Order of Merit is an order of chivalry established on 30 May 1996 by Queen Elizabeth II of New Zealand. ...

Life and work

Ball grew up in New Zealand before spending some years in Australia and South Africa. As a young man he worked for the Dominion newspaper in Wellington and the Manawatu Times before becoming a freelance cartoonist and moving to England, where he found work with publishers DC Thomson, of Dundee. The Dominion Post is a metropolitan broadsheet newspaper published in Wellington, owned by the Australian Fairfax group, owners of The Age of Melbourne and The Sydney Morning Herald. ... For the first Duke of Wellington, see Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. ... For other uses, see England (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Dundee (disambiguation). ...

He developed his character Stanley and had it published in the influential English humour magazine Punch. Stanley the Palaeolithic Hero featured a caveman who wore glasses and struggled with the Neolithic environment. It became the longest running strip in Punch's history and was syndicated in other English and non-English speaking countries. He continued to be published in Punch after returning with his family to New Zealand. Punch was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire published from 1841 to 1992 and from 1996 to 2002. ...

His early career was often heavily political (one of his mid 70's UK strips was All the King's Comrades, and he states in the introdction to The Sisterhood (1993) that he is a socialist. 'Stanley', too is often conscpicuosly left-wing. The Sisterhood was a short-lived English goth band, consisting of Andrew Eldritch (writer and producer), drum machine Doktor Avalanche and the Chorus of Vengeance of Lucas Fox (drums), Patricia Morrison (bass and vocals), James Ray (guitar and vocals) and Alan Vega (synthesizer and vocals). ...

He lives with his wife Pam on a rural property in Gisborne, New Zealand. For other uses of Gisborne see Gisborne (disambiguation). ...

Footrot Flats

In 1976 Ball first published a new strip called Footrot Flats in Wellington's afternoon newspaper, The Evening Post. The strip follows the adventures of a working sheep dog called "Dog", his owner Wal Footrot and the other characters, human and animal, that came into their lives. Dog's thoughts are voiced in thought bubbles, though he is clearly "just a dog" rather than the heavily anthromorphised creatures sometimes found in other comics or animation. Dog also had alter egos including The Grey Ghost.

Ball's Footrot Flats has been syndicated in international newspapers, and been published in over 30 books. Footrot Flats inspired a stage musical^[1], a theme park^[2] and it became New Zealand's first feature length animated film, Footrot Flats: The Dog's Tale in 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. Year 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link displays 1986 Gregorian calendar). ...

Footrot Flats is remarkable for several reasons; its expansive created universe, complete with ancillary characters, things and places; the fact that the characters slowly but perceptively 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). The very first edition of Footrot Flats released in 1978. ... The historic Blue Marble photograph, which helped bring environmentalism to the public eye. ... Feminists redirects here. ...

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".^[3]

Bibliography

As well as collections of his cartoons Ball has written and illustrated a number of books:

• Fifteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest, a satirical look at New Zealand rugby
• Migod! It's Bruce the Barbarian
• The People Makers' (1970)
• The Sisterhood (1993), a comical, but rather irate, masculinist book, which caused some uproar at the time
• The Flowering of Adam Budd (described as pornography in one review)
• Quentin Hankey: Traitor
• Tarzan, Gene Kelly And Me (2001) - approximately, an autobiography.
• Fred the (Quite) Brave Mouse

He also created a large format illustrated novel, whose verse was a parody of the Australian Bush Ballad as popularised by Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson. Titled The Ballad of Footrot Flats. Released around 2001, and originally intended as a second film script, this was to be the last of the Footrot series, as well as the first new Footrot material since 1994. The All Blacks playing the Wallabies. ... Masculism (also referred to as masculinism) is a number of ideologies found in the streams of the mens movement. ... Banjo Paterson. ... Henry Lawson, circa 1902 Henry Lawson[1] (17 June 1867 - 2 September 1922) was an Australian writer and poet. ...

Of Interest

Murray Ball and Charles Schultz were mutual admirers of each other's work. One Footrot Flats strip shows Dog laughing at a Snoopy cartoon. Schultz wrote the introduction to the only Footrot Flats book to be published in the The United States (it was named 'Footrot Flats', but is 'Footrot Flats 4' as released in Australasia.) Charles Monroe Schulz (November 26, 1922 _ February 12, 2000) was a 20th-century American cartoonist best known for his Peanuts comic strip. ... Snoopy is a fictional character in the long-running comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz. ... The very first edition of Footrot Flats released in 1978. ...

See also

• New Zealand literature

New Zealand claims as its own many writers, even those immigrants born overseas or those emigrants who have gone into exile. ...

References

Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 41st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 41st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

• Short profile
• Cartoonists Inc. Documentary, see also (PDF, 0.7 MB)