Belle bursts forward

Tiny, distinctive handwriting, funny, poignant, head scratching and at times indecipherable to anyone but Putze.

‘‘Probably now, I see a lot of myself in Belle. She’s different, she doesn’t accept the system.’’

Back in the early days Putze held down a day job with the Manawatu Standard in advertising and later in promotion. He illustrated at night, aided by the newspaper’s light box, a tool that let him trace his pencil roughs into pen and ink. It’s fair to say he loved that light box and was sad to leave it more than the job.

He struggled on without it, the light through his french doors sufficed, but it was awkward and when it all got too hard, Putze did what he did when push came to shove. He went for a bike ride.

It turned out to be a fortuitous one, because low and behold, crazy as it may seem, there on the side of the road, Putze found a light box. A heaven sent, fell from goodness knows where, but who cares anyway, light box.

He still has it, it’s his mainstay and it’s where Belle goes from light to dark. She then gets propped up on the window sill where the Putze family wander by, gaze upon, comment on and critique. Some strips get binned by this form of review, some get tweaked and others remain just as they are. Belle is part of the family and part of the furniture. She does after all steal many of their musings, daily doings and some of their politics, philosophies, frustrations and joys.

‘‘Belle’s political and philosophical undertones are more about the plight of people. The battles that we face are often the battles that she’s facing, but we may not have the words for it. But we can hopefully identify with some of the things she is dealing with.’’

Putze’s interest in the world of comics really kicked in when he was about 8-years-old.

‘‘ Whizzer and Chips, Buster and Cor, Monster Mash. All those and some serious ones, Tiger and Scorcher. We were lucky to get weekly subscriptions and we used to just paw over them, my brother and sister and I. We would swap them with people and that’s how you got to see American comics, and gala days were the best because we would buy bundles of 10. Your weekend was just heaven after that.’’

Putze started to learn his trade back then, he would copy the characters and study the detail.

‘‘For a young kid that’s a real hand-eye co-ordination thing which is similar to life drawing. You’re looking at something and copying it.’’