Richard Fairgray is legally blind, but he's one of New Zealand's top-selling comic-book writers and artists, Dionne Christian discovers.
"I'm slightly more blind than Stevie Wonder . . .''
On the surface, it's not a surprising admission but when you consider how Richard Fairgray earns a crust, it becomes a little more unexpected. He's New Zealand's highest-selling comic book writer and artist and is now increasingly turning his attention to children's books.
From the Albany home he shares with his wife, fellow artist and writer Tara Black, the couple - along with a handful of writers and artists - have been quietly building Square Planet, a comic book-writing and publishing enterprise, for the past few years.
To date, Fairgray has about 200 titles to his name and works on a number of projects with collaborators around the world for audiences equally as widespread. He's the illustrator, Black the colourist and retired schoolteacher Terry Jones his most frequent writing partner.
The 31-year-old is totally blind in his left eye and has only 3% vision in his right.
His vision issues are combined with a chemical imbalance in his brain that doesn't allow him to filter out senses. For most of us, the mind filters information from the eye, providing a sense of movement from what are essentially still images (like animation or film but much faster). But Fairgray's brain doesn't filter that so he sees and must interpret every single part of every image.
In other words, he sees both less and more and draws by getting extremely close to whatever he's working on. His part of the work is his alone.
Fairgray and Jones are best known for the Blastosaurus comic-book series, about a crime-solving mutant triceratops whose weapon of choice is a state-of-the-art ray gun and pet peeve is being mistaken for a police mascot.
Their partnership extended into picture books three years ago. There's a trio of books that follow the fantastical adventures of a boy called Morgan and two other picture books have recently been released in New Zealand. Scholastic Books has published Gorillas in Our Midst (released last year by Sky Pony Press in the United States) and Penguin Random House has released My Grandpa is a Dinosaur.
They're stories shot through with wry humour and while there are certainly messages in them - tolerance, trusting your own judgement, being open with others - they're not obvious or didactic. The droll humour will make the most cynical children smile and, because of it, widens the age range the books appeal to.
Describing the humour as subtle and underplayed, Fairgray says they create stories with children who are imaginative and curious in mind; Jones says they are aiming at those who recognise the world is full of contradictions.
"The fact is that there are a lot of kids out there who recognise a lot of adults don't make any sense at all and who regularly come across adults who aren't as smart as they are but they can't say it ...''
Jones talks about going to an English boys' school "obsessed with sport'' where not demonstrating the requisite athletic prowess meant "you were nowhere'', while Fairgray was always an entrepreneur constantly butting heads with authority figures.
He wrote and illustrated his first comic books and short stories when he was a 7-year-old, selling them to fellow school pupils and using profits to buy art materials. Teachers were not pleased to discover his business interests extended to doing - and charging for the service - others' homework.
"I was never particularly interested in school,'' Fairgray admits, "because all I wanted to do was draw and write books. My punishment for the homework business was to sit outside the office during lunchtime, but it was fun given that I didn't actually like many people and I got to sit there and draw and write my books.''
By age 15, Fairgray was making a pretty decent part-time living from his enterprises; studies at Elam School of Fine Arts followed, then teaching work, a stint as a stand-up comedian and an attempt at writing a screenplay. He and Jones can't remember exactly how they met, but they've been working together for more than a decade.
Naturally, they share a love of comics, sci-fi and fantasy books, TV series and films; they've got a similar sense of off-beat humour, don't view the world through rose-tinted glasses and, after 13 years in business together, can finish with aplomb each other's sentences.
Jones acknowledges writing can be a solitary and sometimes lonely occupation; he likes that he and Fairgray can be having a conversation and suddenly an idea is born. Take Gorillas in our Midst.
"The Morgan books were quite specific to New Zealand; we were talking about other stuff and I said I'd always wanted to something about gorillas,'' he recalls.
"I made a joke and within 20 minutes, we had worked out a plot.''
- The New Zealand Herald
Read them
The latest books by Richard Fairgray and Terry Jones are: My Grandpa is a Dinosaur (Penguin Random House) and Gorillas in Our Midst (Scholastic).
Win a copy
The ODT has five copies of Gorillas in Our Midst, by Richard Fairgray and Terry Jones, to give away courtesy of Scholastic.
For your chance to win a copy, email helen.speirs@odt.co.nz with your name and postal address in the body of the email, and ‘‘Gorillas Book Competition'' in the subject line, by 5pm on Tuesday, July 19.
LAST WEEK'S WINNERS
Winners of last week's giveaway, My Italian Bulldozer, by Alexander McCall Smith, courtesy of Newsouth, were: Eleanor Edington and Jeanette Idour, of Dunedin, Jo Downer, of Queenstown, Alison MacTavish, of Moeraki, and Ann Paton, of Alexandra.
