Hemi was a just ten-year old school boy when I started drawing him 14 years ago. His family and friends came with him – and over time, that family grew. The strips I wrote about Hemi at his family reunion are some of my favourites from the old stories. I could relate to big whanau (family) reunions on the marae. Hundreds of people you didn’t necessarily know too well, but were related to, sharing stories, music and food.

The drawings back then were much simpler. They had to be. It was a real challenge to fit a story into just four small squares using only a ballpoint pen and some photocopy paper (I was a poor University student, and most of us didn’t have our own computers back then), and unlike now, where I’ll make a toon as long as it needs to be, I really was limited to only four panels.

It’s one of the reasons I don’t share a lot of the old material despite there being literally hundreds of strips all stored neatly in an archive. Some of the drawings are essentially scribbles, and some of the jokes have had their time. But some of them still make me laugh, and I’ll share them eventually in either their original form, or fit them to the updated characters for new stories. The family reunions without doubt will have their day again. Apart from enjoying the humour that comes with telling them, I also really like Hemi’s cousins.

My cousin Alison once said she thought of my sisters and I as her own siblings not just her cousins, and whenever Brian and I are in the same room, you can guarantee one Aunty-or-another will stand us next to each other to take a photo because we look so much alike. We have a lot in common too, but difference or similarity becomes irrelevant among your cuzzies, you’re family.

I’ve just finished updating Hemi’s cousins to reflect their ’13-years-older’ selves. Making the call to do it as a line drawing turned out to be more work than if I’d just coloured them, but I think it helped me ‘re-unite’ with the characters much better. When you cant rely on shading or colour to give them personality, expression becomes everything and you focus on the face. I drew the twins four times before I felt they looked right.

There’s Max, Hemi’s doppleganger only without the long hair (surely everyone has a cousin that could very well be mistaken for their sibling or even their twin?) then the baby – all grown up. In the original strips he was called Bubs, but for a 13-year-old boy, I don’t think that’s really very fair. I don’t know his name yet, so I’ll stick with ‘Boy‘ for now. When you’re at the Marae, you tend to get called ‘boy’ a lot by anyone and everyone who doesn’t know your name.

Hemi’s cousin Emma is named after my own cousin, who in turn is named after our grandmother, plus it was a name I liked. So were Damian and Rewi, her twin brothers. On Hemi’s dad’s side of the family there’s Eruera, a towering giant who works in forestry, and his firey sister Lizzie who’s no-nonsense approach at times leaves a trail of brusied eyes and egos in her wake. Eruera and Lizzie never appeared in the original strips, though they were in other artwork I produced. I had started writing a reunion for Hemi’s dad’s side of the family, but it never got to the drawing stage.

Still – there’s always time aye? Hemi’s got a huge whanau it could take me years to tell all their stories, but then, that’s what the years are for. When my own family get together, that’s what we do. We tell stories. Most of my own cousins live far away from me, but when we get together and we tell stories, it’s amazing to find out just how much we have in common.

When you’re connected by family, there’s nothing more important in the world, and that’s why it’s always a central theme running through the work I do with Hemi. I like to think that’s what he stands for.

…And that’s why a reunion is always something to look forward to.

Kereama