Interview with a cartoonist: Alex Hallatt @alexhtweets – “cartoons can sneak up on people and get them to pay attention”

a) Who are you and how did you end up cartooning, and cartooning from New Zealand

Gosh, an existential question on the kick-off. Hmnn. I’m still figuring out who I am, but I’ve been cartooning since I was a kid and unlike most people I just kept doing it. I loved British comics like Whizzer & Chips, Krazy, Oink! and The Beano, as well as comic strips like Peanuts, Calvin & Hobbes and Bloom County, so I knew I wanted to produce work like that. Around the turn of the millennium I was working for the pharmaceutical industry in a job I hated. I flipped out and downshifted from London to the south coast with my boyfriend at the time (a Kiwi). I mocked up at the local newspaper with some cartoons of mine and the editor gave me a job. I was the cartoonist for Brighton’s Argus newspaper for four years. At that point the Kiwi I was with wanted to return home and that’s how I ended up in New Zealand. Lucky me!

b) when and how did you get switched on to environmental issues, and especially climate change?

I was a kid in the 1970s and started turning off unnecessary lights during the oil crisis and never stopped. Having a science background and reading more and more about climate change around the turn-of-the-century, it was obvious to me that the climate crisis was the biggest problem facing humanity. It stuns me that this doesn’t consume everybody. I can only assume it is because they don’t have a real understanding of what has happened, what is happening and what will happen if we don’t limit our carbon emissions and fix the carbon which is already in the atmosphere. I lay the blame for that at the feet of politicians who have had good scientific advice for decades and who have chosen to ignore it for short term gains at the expense of our long-term future.

c) who are your cartooning heroes/influences, and also other working cartoonists whose work you enjoy

The list is too long so here are three:

• Charles Schulz opened my six-year old eyes to a world that could be created in panels in Peanuts.
• Jeremy Banks (Banx) has inspired me with his unfettered silliness and humour since Mr Big Nose.
• I dream of being as liberated in line and thought as Michael Leunig.

d) what is the cartoon you are proudest of (which may or may not be the one that is most popular/had most influence)

I’m not the best judge. You contacted me about a cartoon that I thought was okay, but has had more resonance than any I’ve done in ages.

I was really proud of a two week series I did about Earth Day this year (https://www.alexhallatt.com/blog/arctic-circle-cartoon-earth-day-50-years-2020). I wrote it weeks before (I have a 6 week lead time) and by the time Earth Day hit, so had something else. No one was talking about the environment this April.

e) what can cartooning do that other forms of communicating can’t

Sneak up on people and get them to pay attention.

f) anything else you’d like to say.