Squashed by a comic artist
Auckland comic artist Arthur Whelan spent three years working on his debut graphic novel, The Visit Of The Spanish Lady. He talks to who makes a cameo in the book.
It seems my climb to the pinnacles of fame knows no obstacle. Having risen to the heights of investigative journalism, I pause for a moment to catch my breathe in the thin alpine air, then look even higher for the next challenge.
Come on, Tenzing – pass the ice axe. Like Sir Ed, I scale ever-upwards – altitude sickness be damned – and laugh at the danger. There’s no rest, no slowing down, no sitting on my ample backside to bask in past glories.
As soon as I conquer one thing, something else beckons. And now, having done everything a man can do in three-dimensions, it was time to have a go in two, as a cartoon.
That’s right. I have been squashed flat, simplified, rendered weightless. I have been reduced from a tubby 3D blob of flesh, blood and calories to a 2D plane of ink, paint and pixels.
In the cartoon in question, I’m the mayor of an imaginary American hamlet called Grottenstown, democratically elected to office by a host of equally fictional citizens.
I like to imagine myself strolling the streets, shaking hands, kissing babies, laughing loudly at the jokes of my constituents in the run-up to the next local body elections.
It started like this. A couple of years ago, I reviewed an American TV doco about cartoonists, and Auckland artist Arthur Whelan emailed me afterwards.
Could I help him find a DVD copy? I sent him my one and he got back to me a few weeks later with a question: would I like to appear in one of his cartoons?
I would, I said, so there I am, the head man of Grottenstown, in a graphic novel of Whelan’s that has finally, after much effort, made it online.
His 180-page comic is being published by American site Comixology, which hosts thousands of comics ranging from the usual spandex superhero fare to the work of international indie creators like Whelan. Based on a photo from this very newspaper, I’m delighted to discover my cartoon lookalike is slimmer than me and a lot better dressed, with the faint hint of a beard. My walk-on role takes place in November, 1918, when I am officiating at a town parade.
There are Civil War veterans wandering about, though a good few of the townspeople have been laid low in their beds at home by an influenza pandemic.
‘‘The story’s called The Visit of the Spanish Lady’’, says Whelan, when I phone him for more details. ‘‘And the influenza virus is actually one of the characters, in the form of a glamorous, ghostly woman called the Spanish Lady who arrives on the morning train and starts claiming victims immediately.’’
As a journalist, I’m delighted to hear that the story’s hero is a lowly newspaper delivery clerk called Bertie.
‘‘He’s the only guy who realises the threat from the virus if everyone converges for the festival, but he’s the town screw-up, so no one ever believes him.’’
Bertie has a confrontation with the Spanish Lady and gets dragged into her eerie world. The poor bugger even finds himself on a train of doomed souls, a harrowing journey where even the mayor cannot help him.
Whelan came up with the original idea, then did all of the artwork over a three-year period, working mostly in cafes or his local library on Auckland’s North Shore.