Words: Cherie Howie
Cover Illustration: Guy Body
Design: Paul Slater

It started with caricatures drawn on beer coasters for a laugh with mates at the pub. By day, young Rod Emmerson was designing roads, water and sewerage for the local authority in the coastal Queensland hamlet of Yeppoon.

By night, he was a survey draftsman.

And by Friday, he was turning coasters into canvas with drinking buddies at the local watering hole.

“The wife of one was a journalist at the local paper, and she pressured me for ages to consider doing up a portfolio of cartoons, so she could put them under the nose of her editor.”

Editor Barry Bransdon eventually prised him away from the civil service with an offer to double his pay, and then dispatched him to Sydney to learn the business from the “cream of Aussie cartooning” - vital in a craft done in isolation and for which there’s no school, Emmerson says.

“You start with a blank page, a pile of news stories, and a narrow window of time to work in.

“You have a finger on the pulse of the wider community, a working knowledge of political dynamics and enough cynicism and foresight to cut through the mountains of word salad to find that sliver of truth or hidden weasel words that will lead to the loose thread, that unravels a complex story and leads to a visual summation.”

Later, Emmerson found himself at international cartooning conferences meeting legends of the trade such as Jerry Robinson.

Robinson, who created Batman foe The Joker, started syndicating his latest protege’s work in the US and Europe.

He’s since spoken at multiple cartooning conferences overseas, mostly in the US, and considered moving stateside but instead crossed the Tasman at the request of former New Zealand Herald editor Gavin Ellis, Emmerson says.

“Gavin was another Barry Brandson. Articulate and methodical, and saw something in me that I was unaware of. That was potential.”

Twenty years on this month, the Herald’s editorial cartoonist has continued to add to the swag of awards he’d already stacked up in the first years of his career across the ditch.

He’s a five-time editorial cartoonist of the year, and an even more frequent nominee, in our national media gongs, currently known as the Voyager Media Awards.

And his They Are Us front page, a depiction of love hearts within a heart in memory of those killed in the Christchurch mosque shootings, was the winning entry in the best use of print category at the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association (Panpa) awards.

Another cartoon following the killing of 51 Muslim worshippers, showing a semi-automatic rifle shape made up of words used in response to the tragedy by then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, is among his most memorable in the last 20 years, Emmerson says.

“I love this cartoon. [It] has the feels of Woodstock about it, yet conveys the stoic yet compassionate response.”

A different Christchurch tragedy, the deadly 2011 earthquake, was immortalised by The hand of Mother Nature - a hand scrubbing the city from the map with a red pen.

Others remembered with pride include those marking the 2004 Civil Union Bill, one showing Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip running down the street with a stolen flat screen TV during the 2011 UK riots and the recyclable depiction of Winston Peters as the Terminator asking his political foes to “Come with me if you want to live”.

“The nightmare of the major parties at almost every election”, Emmerson says of the inspiration behind the work.

Covid-19 also offered rich pickings for the scrapbook, including the split-panel How it started and How it’s going showing Ardern atop a Harley Davidson motorbike before being reduced to using a push scooter in the neighbouring panel.

It’s a role that brings plenty of praise - which is humbling - but also its share of brickbats. His Aussie origin story “only fuels those already blistering in rage”, Emmerson says.

“The expanse and depth of the digital abyss enables those who like to chuck rocks at passing traffic. I'm not bothered and the block button gets a good workout.”

Every day remains a new challenge, including keeping up with changing perceptions and attitudes as the years pass, he says.

“There are times when the work you do may well become a visual benchmark in a nation's history, stir mountains of debate or end up on a fridge door collection.

“Or it's wrapped up with the next order of fish ‘n chips.”