Among New Zealand cartoonists, Barry Linton is perhaps the most respected and influential of his generation. Younger alternative cartoonists like Andy Conlan, Dylan Horrocks and Tim Bollinger all cite him as an important inspiration. Linton’s first published strips were for the student newspaper Craccum, and such underground papers as the Ponsonby Rag. Linton published his first minicomic, Spud Takes Root, in 1977. That same year, he was a founding contributor to Strips. Over the next ten years he drew over 100 pages for Strips (80 of which he collected in 1994 in the self-published Chok Chok).

More recently, Linton has directed his focus towards "Lucky Aki", a story of a Polynesian character going about daily life in the stone age.