Walpole cartoonist Nathan Vass Viney releases latest book, New Friends, inspired by beloved hometown

A Walpole cartoonist has drawn inspiration from his beloved hometown and launched his latest children’s comic book.

The book includes comics from Walpole Weekly issues in 2021 to 2022 and behind the scenes images of pre-production for the Walpole Community Resource Centre documentary Walpole Kids: Meet the Artists, which he helped to create earlier this year.

It also includes some of Viney’s original sketches of his early comic strips and even a short cameo of local celebrity Gary Muir from WOW Wilderness tours, known as a strong advocate for Walpole and surrounding communities.

Viney said the comic features fresh references to relatable local concepts and provides an insight into living in Walpole.

“The book is very central to the idea of living in Walpole,” he said. “I like to incorporate real life into the comics.”

“The Walpole Kids comic also uses a lot of local humour like how we all have PO boxes rather than letterboxes.”

Viney said he really tried to tap into the primary-school-age kids to inspire them to become interested in the art of comic creation.

“I think it should still be exciting for kids to flick to the comics page in a newspaper like I used to do when I was young.”

Viney said he was inspired to create local-centric comics when he moved to Walpole in 2020 and dreamed of getting his comics into regional newspapers.

“My comics ended up being well-received from the paper and the goal soon became to produce one comic per week,” he said.

Viney now produces a comic per fortnight for the Walpole Weekly and said he eventually wanted to pursue different forms of storytelling.

“I’d like to create a long-running story rather than one with a punchline,” he said.

“This will allow me to expand character personalities and really emphasise the essence of living in Walpole visually, with more colour and nature in the artwork.”

New Friends can be purchased online on Nathan Viney’s website and in several stores across Walpole and Denmark, including the Walpole Makers Collective.

He said he was hoping to have it released across Manjimup and the rest of WA soon.