Latest work
Earlier
Cartoon depicts hikers drinking thirstily from a country water hole unaware that a dead sheep is rotting upstream
Sheep Thrills
Author: Chris Slane
Cartoons: Chris Slane
Random House 1989 ISBN 1-86954-004-2
48pp colour/black & white
Out of print
Cartoon depicts Prime Minister Christopher Luxon labouring to fill potholes on a long country road. Two farmers leaning on a fence are watching Luxon. One says "Better hurry up Chris. Only 99 days left." Refers to list of National Party's 100 day priorities.
Cartoon depicts flying pigs coming into NZ concerns over the possible worldwide spread of African Swine Fever in pigs, MPI is monitoring the situation. 'MPI monitoring global spread of African Swine Fever - News'
Excerpt depicts Maui stealing fire from his grandmother Murirangwhenua, an excerpt from the book 'Maui Legends of the Outcast'
By Chris Slane & Robert Sullivan
Illustration depicts Maui
From the book 'Maui Legends of the Outcast'
By Chris Slane & Robert Sullivan
Design, Storyboards, Pencils, Inks, Lettering, Colours: Chris Slane.
Script: Robert Sullivan.
Colours: Jonathan Paynter, Bill Paynter.
Technical Direction and Fonts: Bill Paynter.
48 pp colour Hardback
Godwit Publishing, New Zealand
© 1996
ISBN:1-86962-006-2
9 781869 620066
1997 Finalist LIANZA Children's Book Awards, Rusell Clark Medal, 1997 NZLA Young People's Non-Fiction Award.
Illustration depicts Maui throwing a stone. Excerpt from Maui: Legends Of The Outcast - A Graphic Novel
By Chris Slane & Robert Sullivan
Each day Maui waited for sunset when Taranga returned, carrying a basket of food. Maui grew impatient to know where his bother went each day. Excerpt from Maui: Legends Of The Outcast - A Graphic Novel
By Chris Slane & Robert Sullivan
Maui as a fly. Excerpt from Maui: Legends Of The Outcast - A Graphic Novel
By Chris Slane & Robert Sullivan
Illustration depicts Maui meeting his grandmother Murirangwhenua
Illustration depicts Maui
From the book 'Maui Legends of the Outcast'
By Chris Slane & Robert Sullivan
Design, Storyboards, Pencils, Inks, Lettering, Colours: Chris Slane.
Script: Robert Sullivan.
Colours: Jonathan Paynter, Bill Paynter.
Technical Direction and Fonts: Bill Paynter.
48 pp colour Hardback
Godwit Publishing, New Zealand
© 1996
ISBN:1-86962-006-2
9 781869 620066
1997 Finalist LIANZA Children's Book Awards, Rusell Clark Medal, 1997 NZLA Young People's Non-Fiction Award.
Author: Chris Slane
Cartoons: Chris Slane
Random House 1989 ISBN 1-86954-004-2
48pp colour/black & white
Out of print
Author: Chris Slane
Random House NZ 2009
Softback 80pp 210 x 150mm NZ$24.99 RRP
Out of print
Gripping Yarns
NZ Listener feature By Philip Matthews
Maui battles big themes - and some very bad weather - to resurface in the short attention era.
Forty-eight pages of birth, death, violence, mythology, creation, destruction and some very, very unpleasant weather: artist Chris Slane and poet Robert Sullivan have dragged a legend kicking and screaming into the short-attention-span century. Maui: Legends of the Outcast, published this month by Godwit, is a graphic novel of the creation stories of Maui.
Of course, some might say that calling a comic a graphic novel is like raising the tone of rock music by handing it to a symphony orchestra (Jaz Coleman alert). "Well, it depends on how seriously you treat it," says Slane, who is an acknowledged fan of the father of all graphic novels, Art Speigelman's Holocaust saga Maus. "It has been a misused term.''
But, if the themes are big enough and the weather's bad enough, call it Shakespeare. "I think we have a right to call it a novel," Sullivan says. "Because it gives it that status. It comes from a greater story -the creation story and how we view the world. His saga is part of the greater saga. It's not just a fairy story for Maori people. It is actually quite serious. There are lessons to be drawn from Maui's actions."
And the actions in Legends of the Outcast are the familiar stories crammed into a tidy chronological timeline. From Maui's abandonment as a baby - tossed to the depths of the sea, left to the elements - to robbing his grandmother of her jawbone (while she lives), which he uses to haul in the famous land-fish. Changing his shape, stealing fire, regulating the movement of the sun, creating mortality -it is visceral material at the best of times, and pumped up to another level by vivid, sometimes horrifying images (the grandmother is huge and zombie-like, the beach in the opening pages is a windswept hell), with Slane's style owing more to European art comics than superhero pulp.
Quite nasty stuff, all in all. "Yeah, gripping yarns," says Slane with a laugh. He came to the project five years ago, reasonably cold. Sullivan, who came on board a little later, is Maori and more familiar with Maui - "I felt quite close to the character, because he's part of my childhood." Over the five years they scraped together the time to keep the graphic novel alive. Slane had commercial illustration work to do, Sullivan moved to Wellington to study librarianship and both had more children. They kept in touch through fax and, over the past year, with Sullivan back in Auckland, they burnt the midnight oil to meet the deadline. While Si111ivan melted the story down to its base elements, which is where a background in poetry helps - "I like the intensity of the language in this format. We have to use as few words as possible" - Slane came up with storyboards and thumb-nail sketches, until his final version of the artwork was handed to digital artist Bill Paynter, who scanned it all in and gave it back to them on a CD. "Not only do we get a book," jokes Slane, "but we get a record as well."
Paynter turned Slane's handwriting into a typeface called "Slane Wobbly" and added the type on screen. "Most American comics are done that way now," Slane says. "They look handwritten, but they're not actually handwritten."
The publishers optimistically predict, given the huge popularity of the Hercules and Xena TV series, that Illustrations from the strips: Maui "destroys the old way of doing things, but invents a new one". Maui's time may have finally come. 'Hercules is a different kind of hero," Slane says. "He's the tough guy using his strength."
"Maui's more like Odysseus," Sullivan says, "using his intelligence and his cunning, whereas Hercules is a bit of an ox."
But the story certainly has the mythic element that has worked in everything from Moses to The Lion King: the abandoned hero returns with a magical link to the great beyond. "The further out he's thrown." Slane says, "the more strength it gives him when he comes back.
'He's a real anarchist in a way. I think that was part of the appeal. There are moral messages that I didn't realise when I came to it. I came with a satirical view and I realised that there was humour, a mischievous humour, but a moral element as well. He destroys the old way of things, but invents a new one."
"He helped define the world for Maori people," Sullivan says. "He's part of that cycle of myths where you have the creation of the world. the separation of land and water, and he helps define things like how long the day is by slowing down the sun.
"Most Maori can, in some way, relate themselves back to the gods, the ones who are in touch with their roots. So, when we talk about their families, we've got to get it right."
Still, liberties can be taken. "The stories are in the public domain. We've drawn on lots of versions. It really is public property. But, even today, there's always going to be an oral version out there we could never try to take."
The huge project is wrapped up, but all this thinking about mythology has set Sullivan off - to his next volume, which may be called Star Waka. "Now that the Maul timeline is off the fridge, I can think about being a poet again."
23/11/1996
Page 44 of Nice Day For A War. This page combines cartoons created by New Zealand soldiers at the front. Text by Matt Elliott.
Excerpt from the book 'Maui Legends of the Outcast' depicts Maui and his bothers preparing a trap for the sun Tamanui-Te-Ra.
By Chris Slane & Robert Sullivan
Illustration depicts Maui
From the book 'Maui Legends of the Outcast'
By Chris Slane & Robert Sullivan
Design, Storyboards, Pencils, Inks, Lettering, Colours: Chris Slane.
Script: Robert Sullivan.
Colours: Jonathan Paynter, Bill Paynter.
Technical Direction and Fonts: Bill Paynter.
48 pp colour Hardback
Godwit Publishing, New Zealand
© 1996
ISBN:1-86962-006-2
9 781869 620066
1997 Finalist LIANZA Children's Book Awards, Rusell Clark Medal, 1997 NZLA Young People's Non-Fiction Award.
Pattern of tree roots inside cover of the book 'Maui Legends of the Outcast'
By Chris Slane & Robert Sullivan
Design, Storyboards, Pencils, Inks, Lettering, Colours: Chris Slane.
Script: Robert Sullivan.
Colours: Jonathan Paynter, Bill Paynter.
Technical Direction and Fonts: Bill Paynter.
48 pp colour Hardback
Godwit Publishing, New Zealand
© 1996 ISBN: 0 908877 97 8
1997 Finalist LIANZA Children's Book Awards, Rusell Clark Medal, 1997 NZLA Young People's Non-Fiction Award.
Illustration depicts the Maui trapping the sun Tamanui-Te-Ra pages 42-43 in the book 'Maui Legends of the Outcast'
By Chris Slane & Robert Sullivan
Illustration depicts Maui
From the book 'Maui Legends of the Outcast'
By Chris Slane & Robert Sullivan
Design, Storyboards, Pencils, Inks, Lettering, Colours: Chris Slane.
Script: Robert Sullivan.
Colours: Jonathan Paynter, Bill Paynter.
Technical Direction and Fonts: Bill Paynter.
48 pp colour Hardback
Godwit Publishing, New Zealand
© 1996
ISBN:1-86962-006-2
9 781869 620066
1997 Finalist LIANZA Children's Book Awards, Rusell Clark Medal, 1997 NZLA Young People's Non-Fiction Award.
Maui Catches a Land Fish (Ikaroa-a-Māui) from the book 'Maui Legends of the Outcast'
By Chris Slane & Robert Sullivan.
Illustration depicts Maui
From the book 'Maui Legends of the Outcast'
By Chris Slane & Robert Sullivan
Design, Storyboards, Pencils, Inks, Lettering, Colours: Chris Slane.
Script: Robert Sullivan.
Colours: Jonathan Paynter, Bill Paynter.
Technical Direction and Fonts: Bill Paynter.
48 pp colour Hardback
Godwit Publishing, New Zealand
© 1996
ISBN:1-86962-006-2
9 781869 620066
1997 Finalist LIANZA Children's Book Awards, Rusell Clark Medal, 1997 NZLA Young People's Non-Fiction Award.
Graphic novel page showing New Zealand troops moving into main front line trenches by night. Excerpt page from book 'Nice Day For A War'
Graphic novel page showing New Zealand troops working in the front lines. Excerpt page from book 'Nice Day For A War'
Graphic novel page showing the arrangement of entrenchments in the front lines. Excerpt page from book 'Nice Day For A War'
Graphic novel page showing New Zealand troops working in the front lines by night. Excerpt page from book 'Nice Day For A War'
Graphic novel page showing a day in life of New Zealand troops in the front lines. Excerpt page from book 'Nice Day For A War'
Graphic novel page showing a photograph in Ploegsteert Wood. Excerpt page from book 'Nice Day For A War'
Graphic comic page showing a young Cyril Elliott departing for enlistment. Excerpt page from book 'Nice Day For A War'
Introductory page with a photograph and text of the author's grandfather, Cyril Elliot. This book illustrates his war diary. Cyril Elliott was a teenager when he enlisted to fight in World War I, lured by the idea of exciting travel and adventure. What he found was quite different. But misery and terror were made easier by Kiwi humour, mates, and writing in his diary.
Cyril Elliott spent three years overseas with the New Zealand Rifle Brigade in World War I, and fought and was injured at the Western Front. He wrote of his experiences in his diary every day.
Matt’s father still possesses two of Cyril’s war diaries, as well as postcards sent and received from home. Excerpt page from book 'Nice Day For A War'
Introductory page with a photograph of Cyril Elliot's war diary. Excerpt page from book 'Nice Day For A War'
Cover of book 'Nice Day For A War'Excerpt page from book 'Nice Day For A War'
Cover watercolour art for cover book 'Nice Day For A War'
Cartoon depicts a pack of MAGA wolves howling at the moon. Among them sits a naked Donald Trump also pretending to howl, along with a GOP elephant. They are sweating with fear as one of the MAGA wolves begins to sniff at their plump backsides. Skulls and bones lie scattered around them. Title: 'Howling with wolves'. Slane, after Paul Weber. Refers to a lithograph titled 'Howl with wolves you must' by Andreas Paul Weber, prominent lithographer, draftsman and painter, was imprisoned during the Nazi regime as he worked with the resistance circle of Ernst Niekisch.
Cartoon depicts a farming couple standing next to a rural letterbox. "Looks like someone stole your annuiversary present" says he. "Well at least he's not blaming you this year". says she to a dog. Heading reads 'Rural thefts on the rise-News'
Cartoon depicts NZFirst leader Winston Peters standing in the doorway of a western saloon, hands poised over his pistols. "Any man don't wanna form a coalition better clear on out the back." Various patrons of the bar are scrambling to get away. Refers to Clint Eastwood film 'The Unforgiven' and political turmoil among parties of the right regarding possible coalitions during the 2023 #NZPol election campaign.
Cartoon depicts a middle-aged man holding a glass under a water fall labelled 'Internet' catching water and announcing to two bystanders "Wow! This online research confirms all my beliefs exactly!" Refers to quote by Arthur C. Clarke: “Getting information from the internet is like getting a glass of water from the Niagara Falls.” #confirmationbias
Cartoon depicts two men crossing a waterway on the back of a crocodile towards an arrow sign which reads 'Polling'. “Follow me, Seymour. I have a clear pathway to power” says Chris Luxon as he & David Seymour walk across a pond on the back of a crocodile labelled 'NZFirst'. Winston Peters, for the old croc is he, smiles with one eye open.