Michael Leunig Strange Creatures

Reviewed by BILL PAYNTER

I have always admired Australians' non-conformist attitudes and indifference to authority. When I bought my first book of Leunig's cartoons in the early '70s, he epitomised this for me and demonstrated the cartoonist's role of thinking outside the square and shedding new light on a subject.

I liked the way he did this with clever but simple drawings, whimsical and often "laugh-out-loud" humour, often on topics where angels fear to tread. This was at a time in New Zealand when Minhinnick and Lodge's highly stylised and rigid cartoons held sway.

Leunig, with his Mr Curly, his enigmatic duck, angels and happy little characters, occupied a unique and mystical space — original and with a perceptive view of humanity that had no peers. And, amazingly, he has maintained this brilliance over the decades, his present collection of cartoons continuing in this tradition. Made up of work that has appeared in the Melbourne Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and Nation Review, much of it has a strong antiwar stance and is critical of John Howard's pro-Bush politics and Australia's joining the war in Iraq.

The first cartoon sets the tone of the book. It depicts a cowboy and two soldiers peering down from a bluff at a couple of Indian wigwams in a valley, with the cowboy saying, "they've got bows and arrows of mass destruction".

Leunig also lampoons modern consumer society, technology and a particular male newspaper columnist called Steve Anvilbanger, whom I suspect exists everywhere under different names.

Strange Creatures' back cover with its poem and picture of a thoughtful Mr Curly following a duck probably reflects how he feels today.

Terrorism blows you up

Nastiness grinds you down

Stupidity wears you out

The media sucks you in, drags you under

Politics does you over

Up, down, in, out, under, over!

But ducks ...

Ducks just let you be.


* Bill Paynter is an Auckland illustrator and cartoonist