Culture shock: how trauma inspired a graphic novel

Article by Roger Mason.

The only photo I have of me working at the factory, in 1995.

Many people came from afar with working visas, 

like these two, whose names I regret I’ve forgotten.

A friend once suggested that working in a canning factory had traumatised me. He was half-joking, but employment in a smelly, loud, frenetic industrial site that processed meat and vegetables into canned foodstuffs was certainly a contrast to art college. I worked there during and after college, from 1995 to around 2000, until I left the place in disgrace with my tail between my legs (a story you’ll have to wait for Book 3 to find out about).

Situated by the Wash in Lincolnshire, England, HL Foods (now Princes Ltd) saw me sweeping up, lugging heavy sacks of pulses, pulling dead frogs out of raw peas, de-labelling hundreds of wrongly-labelled cans and hand-filling tins with frozen sausages and mushrooms. It was often too loud to talk, so I’d think; tuning out the factory’s incessant rattle and developing stories for comics. I hated it but I made good money to fund my student lifestyle (and pot habit), met terrific people and received the flash of inspiration I’m still working on 25 years later. 

The factory is a maze of pipes, vats, machinery and ‘can trains’ – overhead mini rails running through the site carrying empty, label-less cans (known as ‘brights’) into production areas to be filled, cooked, labelled and transported to supermarkets. Daydreaming hopelessly, I began to envisage little people using these ‘can trains’ to get around. Being massively influenced by 2000AD it was a short step to conceiving a giant alien factory where humans were the resident vermin. 

Quick choices were made: I set it 200 years in the future – like Judge Dredd; called the place Order Nine – after a colleague’s log-in code for the office database (mine was Order 27) and based the aliens on workers around me. As for the humans, Mulligatawny was named after a type of soup (spend eight hours a day staring at lists of tinned goods and see what happens to your brain), Diana was named after Princess Diana, who died while I worked in the factory’s canteen. 

I regret clocking in the following Monday and cheerily asking everyone how their weekend was.

I scarred Mulligatawny’s face to make him more distinctive and based Diana on my then-girlfriend. The design of the aliens was so hasty I neglected to give them mouths, which came back to haunt me, as you’ll see in Culture Shock. I called it The Mice because, well, they were mice and The Rats felt too nasty.

So it was half-baked, like a poisonous tin of corned beef – a joke story in response to a dead mouse turning up in someone’s beans on toast on a Sunday morning. That incident made the national papers and I twisted it into my story. Humans burying their dead in tins to be shipped into space had notes of ‘scifi Viking funeral’ that I liked.

I made a 25-page story about the can burial idea, a short story for a mini comic and then Cat Food in 2002 (see Book 1) – then something unusual happened. They say your art betrays you, but I thought the artist is the last one to notice. One day I realised Mulligatawny was me and I knew why he was reckless. Diana knows what she wants but she’s not going to get it. Within the trappings of action, giant aliens and man-eating cats sat my heart. The story was intensely personal and about my coming out: a painful experience because I was consumed by fear and shame.

I felt exposed and off-balance but ideas flooded in. The story grew exponentially, revealing events I could not wait to draw and some I was afraid of. How much was I comfortable showing Mulligatawny’s sexuality? I spent years worrying whether to show a gay kiss or not. Other questions I wrestled with included what made the fields inaccessible? Why don’t the humans leave the site and live in them? And, do the humans actually have a chance of winning? I thought they might, if you consider food hygiene law. I fretted that The Mice was too boring a title. It was exhausting.

Cover art of Book 2

I wrote the script and began the art sometime around 2003. Originally intended for publication as three mini comics, its previous titles were Mud and The Day the Earth Came in Through The Window. Mulligatawny kicks things off, walking in shadow with tears in his eyes. We learn something is wrong with his relationship with Diana. Meanwhile Cota, one of my favourite characters to write, is up to something involving captured humans. Despite reports of this threatening development our heroes, along with new characters Harry and Venus, leave Order Nine and head into the fields. 

Some ideas may seem more calculated than they are. Wondering which buildings in the vicinity might be poking out of deep alien fields, well, if you know Lincolnshire like I do there’s only one contender. That it brings centuries of history and meaning is a bonus most writers would happily accept, I imagine. This building grounded the series, introduced a way to comment on today’s society and gave the humans a way out.

When not working as a storyboard artist in London I drew it, intermittently, up until chapter three and Barack climbing into a drain. I stopped there, sometime around 2007, for several years as I had decided the series needed a new beginning. Since I wasn’t going to publish the first story about the Viking can funeral (drawn on A3 paper while everything after is on A4, plus Diana doesn’t look right) I rewrote it and created The Factory Menace, a prequel to Cat Food and published in Book 1. Writing prequels is counter-intuitive. I like my stories to lead me along and let the characters drive, but prequels must feed into the next installment. If you get carried away you may undo a lot of work. And making The Mice even longer turned the project into a burden. 

Duul captures a human. Page detail from Book 2

Sometimes I’d stuff it all in a box in my studio and ignore it for months. What was I doing? Who was interested in this book? Many publishers and agents rejected it. Why wasn’t I pursuing other avenues, like trying to get more work in the French comic industry? I’d amazingly opened it up after years of trekking to Angouleme and had two books published there – a great achievement. I’d swing back and forth on this question until I’d admit I didn’t want to leave it unfinished. I’d get the box out, remind myself where I was and proceed.

I resumed work on Culture Shock around 2009. In the interim Scooter became a favourite character and had been given a new wardrobe. I even altered the book’s ending to give her more airtime. Seeing this, while wearing my editor’s hat, I had to re-draw a couple of panels so she wouldn't upstage Mulligatawny and Diana. 

And that was it. Scar Comics published an edition in 2013. After signing with Markosia I slightly revised the art, produced a new cover, and here it is. 

I don’t feel as exposed any more, the heat has dissipated over the years. I only wish it hadn’t been so difficult, but, you know, pressure makes diamonds so they say.

New Zealand, August 2025

        Order your copy: https://www.amazon.com/Mice-Book-Culture-Shock/dp/1917459939