Devlog: in memory of Fred “Cul” Cullen

Martha Hurry - Double Agent was developed by Ward van der Veer, as a kind of homage to his late uncle, Fred "Cul" Cullen, who was the cartoonist behind Martha Hurry, the character who narrates this game, briefs you before every mission, and mocks you when you lose.

Who Fred Cullen was

Fred Cullen (born September 1934, died December 1982) worked across newspapers, television, and film in Australia for the better part of three decades. He started as a press artist for Australian Consolidated Press on the Telegraph, freelanced for Sydney's A.M., and contributed cartoons to The Bulletin from the early 1950s onward — his byline convention was to sign smaller cartoons “Cul” and larger ones “Cullen,” which is where the nickname comes from.

Fred's Martha Hurry comes from his time at the satirical Kings Cross Whisper in the 1960s; he would later develop the character "Fred the Fisherman" for the Fishing News.

His career didn't stop at the drawing board. He moved into television as an art director at ATN Channel 7 and a set designer at Crawford Productions, and later shifted into scriptwriting — his screen credits include many episodes of the long-running police drama Homicide. He won two Logie Awards in 1974 for the Homicide episode “The Friendly Fellow” (Best Script and Outstanding Single Acting Performance), a further Best Script Logie in 1975 for “The Fireworks Man”, and both a Logie and a Penguin Award for Best Documentary Script in 1977 for the documentary series Australians at War. One of his last works was the screenplay for the 1982 film The Man from Snowy River. In the mid-1970s he also released Sometimes, an album of songs and monologues, through the Earth label.

Why a Cold War strategy game

Martha Hurry as a character came out of Fred's own era — the paranoia, double-dealing, and gallows humour of Cold War satire were exactly the register his cartooning worked in. A hidden-loyalty spy game, where you can never quite be sure which of your own agents are actually working for you, felt like the right vehicle for that sensibility, translated from a comic panel into something playable. Everything from Martha's brief-and-mock dialogue style to the dossier-and-typewriter visual language of the UI is trying to stay true to that.

This is a labour of love, not a commercial venture built to imitate a comic strip — it's a new game, inspired by a family legacy Ward would like to see remembered.