Tāmaki Untold: King Pin Comic Artist

Creating a historical comic is filled with all sorts of unexpected challenges. On one hand you've got the source material; images, words and facts, but sometimes to tell a good story you need to draw some lines, quite literally, between them to string them into a punchy narrative.

Join us as Toby Morris shares his process of creating the two 'King Pin Comics', Bushwhackers: The Long Road Home, 1990 andTorpedo: Billy Murphy, Champion of the World, 1890 - from research, interviews and writing through to drawing the final works. He'll talk about some puzzles he encountered along the way, some of the unique benefits and challenges in creating non-fiction comics and some of the lessons he learned while taking on this project.

About our presenter: Toby Morris

Toby Morris is an illustrator, comic artist and writer known for documentary comics and illustrated storytelling across a wide range of mediums.

He's a three time winner of Best Cartoonist and five time winner of Best Artwork/Graphics at the New Zealand Media Awards for his long-running comics-journalism series, The Side Eye. In 2021 he won the Prime Minister's Prize for Science Communication for his work with Dr Siouxsie Wiles communicating the science of Covid-19. His children's books Te Tiriti O Waitangi and Pūkeko Who-keko have topped the NZ bestseller charts and his artwork even graces the Edmonds Baking Powder box.

Make sure to visit the exhibition, King Pin, to explore a century of New Zealand's boxing and wrestling history through the Dave Cameron collection. This is a free exhibition at Tāmaki Pātaka Kōrero | Central City Library.