FOREWORD I ALWAYS felt about crosswords the way I now feel about croissants. I like to watch other people eating moist buttery croissants, but I can t

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3 FOREWORD I ALWAYS felt about crosswords the way I now feel about croissants. I like to watch other people eating moist buttery croissants, but I can t eat them myself because I m a coeliac. I m very fond of a crossword, though I never do them. For me they re a spectator sport. My mother and her sisters loved crosswords. I d sit on the side-lines when they were doing one, suggesting as many words as might conform to the clue, regardless of spelling, because I had a profound and helpless alienation from spelling. But Elizabeth, it has eight letters, they d remind me, or, No. It has an L in the middle. Still, often I d get the word from sheer volume of vocabulary, all the possibilities proliferating around the clue. Mum and the aunts would be pleased and peeved at the same time, which I enjoyed. When I first saw Sharon Murdoch s Munro, it was the cat I looked at. I have a cat very like Munro. Munro s black stripes and all over orangeness tell us he is a red tabby within the parameters of newspaper print. I don t recall noticing that the attractive cat was adjacent to a crossword, or realising that, whatever he was doing, it was a clue, that his purpose was to enact a word. Rather, what I found I wanted to do every time I turned to that page, was discover what this person this animal person might be up to. For weeks I only looked at the picture. I think that made it easier for me 3

4 to really fall for the two essential beauties of Murdoch s Munro, its loving narrative character, and a sense of humour somwhere between whimsy and surrealism. After a time I did start looking at the fine print, not because I intended to do the crossword. What I became interested in was how Murdoch s imagination would play the hand it was dealt: the word. I think that having to choose to illustrate one word that someone else has chosen is a game with rules, rules that provide the discipline that make the sweet madness of the Munro cartoon possible. Munro is a recognisable cat who does things familiar to cat owners: the fastidious washing between his toes, the determined sleeping in a tight ball, the turned back and ears set at an irritable horizontal, upside down paper-shredding, and bristling displeasure. A cat. A little idol who will not be mocked because he absorbs all mockery. This naturalism is the cartoon s foundation. The fact the cat reads, takes mice for rides, goes ice-skating, and that birds have bicycles, is the buoyant part of the art. The peculiar joy of it all! The square near the back page of my morning newspaper is a remedy for the rest of it. That corner of a kitchen whose occupants are busy, relaxed, curious, opinionated, playful, self-respecting, and little. A lot of little things. ELIZABETH KNOX Wellington, September,

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7 PREFACE WHEN I began drawing cartoons, after years working as a graphic designer, I had no idea how to do it. Turns out it s harder than it looks. Some of these cartoons I look at a wonder, what happened? Did I forget how to draw Munro that day? But no matter how erratically drawn the Munro cartoons may be, the drawing of them always makes me happy. There is so much of my life in them: Munro and LaLuna are our cats; my daughter s name and husband s initials are hidden on Munro s newspaper page. Even Iris, our family s little terrier, has recently begun appearing in the Munro cartoons. Munro changed my life in other ways: all the practice I got drawing the cat and the mouse gave me an entrée to drawing political cartoons. In turn the Munro cartoons are the antidote to my day job drawing political cartoons. Munro lives in a little world where, despite their disagreements, the inhabitants love each other. It s a peaceable kingdom. Unlike politics. Munro made his first appearance when I was asked to do a one-off filler for an small empty space on the next day s puzzle page. Using what was at hand, I took a clue from one of the crossword puzzles, and added our cat Munro, who parks himself on any open newspaper. opposite Munro, Mouse, The Invisible Hand of Ms Murdoch, La mystérieuse LaLuna, and the bearded Iris. 7

8 Previously I d done little unpublished drawings of a cat and a newspaper, but now I had a deadline. As you work your way through the clues, you ll find, if you look closely, that the answer is sometimes hidden in the cartoon. Sometimes Munro demonstrates the word, and at other times he thinks he knows the answer but really doesn t. If you can t figure out the answer, they are in the back of the book. In 1916, Don Marquis, a columnist for The Evening Sun in New York City, began writing his Archy & Mehitabel column. Archy, a cockroach, lived in the newspaper office, eating paste and curled sandwiches. At night, when the office was quiet, he would emerge to record his reflections on life, and to tell tales of his friend Mehitabel, an alleycat who claimed to be Cleopatra reincarnated. Written in uncapitalised blank verse Archy had to headbutt the typewriter keys, and couldn t hold down the shift key the columns were later collected in three books, and illustrated by George Herriman, who also drew the beloved Krazy Kat comic strip. So, here, in the fine tradition of a cat, a newspaper, and a small vermin, is Munro, the day he realised he could do the crossword SHARON MURDOCH Wellington, September,

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24 $ x 105 mm, 160 pp, hardback PLC, colour illustrations throughout ISBN: Stock No: 6254 Published: September 2018 ISBN