Noel Cook began his professional career not as an illustrator, but as an articled clerk with an architectural-engineering firm in Taumarunui, New Zealand. During World War I, Cook left his job as an assistant town clerk in Tauranga to enlist with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF). Serving as an infantryman with the 15th Reinforcements (No.2 Group), he was wounded during the Battle of Messines (Belgium) in June 1917.
Returning to New Zealand, Cook accepted an artist cadetship with the New Zealand Herald and Weekly News. In the early 1920s, he migrated to Australia, where he shared accommodation in Sydney with another expatriate New Zealand artist, Cecil 'Unk' White (q.v.). Cook began selling cartoons to The Bulletin and Smith's Weekly, but enjoyed his first major success when his children's fantasy comic, 'Peter and the Other Roaming Folk', was accepted by the Sunday Times (ca.1923-1924).
Cook subsequently accepted an offer from the rival Sunday Sun newspaper to produce a new colour version of 'Peter' at a higher salary. Pat Sullivan (q.v.), creator of Felix the Cat, allegedly brokered a deal on Cook's behalf whereby he could produce 'Peter' for the Bell Syndicate in New York City, an offer that Cook declined.
Cook was one of the first Australian newspaper cartoonists to experiment with the new 'adventure strip' format that came into vogue throughout the 1930s. Cook's first serial, 'Bobby and Betty', was created for the Daily Telegraph in August 1933, but he still persisted in using typeset text placed beneath each panel to convey the story. For his next adventure strip, 'Dick Dean, Reporter', Cook adopted the now-standard technique of incorporating caption boxes and speech balloons within each panel. First appearing in the Daily Telegraph in March 1936, 'Dick Dean' also made innovative use of a two-tiered panel layout, a format that has seldom been used for daily edition newspaper strips, either then or now.
Throughout the early 1940s, Cook found a new outlet for his work in the thriving Australian comic-book market. Cook reused many of his comic strips from the previous decade for inclusion in comic books published by the Offset Printing Company. Hence, 'Bobby and Betty' appeared in Pep Comics (ca.1941), 'Peter' resurfaced in Avalanche Comics (ca.1944), and 'Dick Dean, Reporter' was reprinted in Kayo (ca.1944).
Cook served with the Australian Army from 1942 to 1944. In his post-war work for Australian comics publishers, his abiding interest in science-fiction themes became evident. Cook wrote and illustrated both Pirate Planet and Peril Planet for the NSW Bookstall Company (ca.1945). For Frank Johnson Publications, he created the futuristic serial 'Hawk Larse - In the Year 2000AD' (Champion Comic, ca.1946). This was followed in 1947 by The Blue Ray and Treasure Planet, two further science-fiction comics produced for the K.G. Murray Publishing Company.
Cook arguably remains best remembered for the anthropomorphic hero of Kokey Koala and his Magic Button, the series he created for Elmsdale Publications in 1947. In addition to writing and illustrating this long-running series, Cook also drew covers for the company's range of pulp novels and fiction magazines.
In 1950, Cook migrated to England, where he eventually became Art Editor/Art Director on a range of juvenile magazines, including The Children's Newspaper, produced by Fleetway Publications. He lived in England until 1977, when he returned to New Zealand for two years; an exhibition of his artwork, 'Galactic Miracle', was held at the Auckland City Art Gallery throughout May-June 1979. Cook returned to England, where he remained until his death in 1981.
