Portal:New Zealand/Selected article/Week 34, 2006

Footrot Flats was a comic strip written by New Zealand cartoonist Murray Ball. It ran from 1975 until 1994 in newspapers around the world, though the unpublished strips continued to be released in book form until 2000. There was also a stage musical, an animated feature film called Footrot Flats: the Dog's Tail Tale, and even a theme park.

The cartoon was based around the life of Wal Footrot's sheep dog, "Dog", on their farm Footrot Flats (hence the title), and the other characters, human and animal, that came into their lives. Dog's thoughts are voiced in thought bubbles, though he is clearly "just a dog" rather than the heavily anthropomorphised creatures sometimes found in other comics or animation.

The humour was based around the foibles of the characters, which many, particularly farmers themselves, found easy to recognise around them. There was much "humour in adversity", making fun of the daily struggle that permeates farming life. The depictions of the animals are quite realistic and detailed, with a dose of comic anthropomorphism superimposed without spoiling the farming realism. Recently featured: Weta &middot; Tokoroa &middot; William Hayward Pickering &middot; Archive