by Andrew Pilcher

12 years a cat

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After 700 strips of cramped drawings two-up on A4 paper – it’s an enormous luxury to be able to stretch out and draw big again. It’s taking a bit of getting used to, hence the slightly hesitant line that you see here. But it’s coming back to me and I’m going to really enjoy drawing some intricate backgrounds when the story requires them again. For the moment, after two months of drawing landscapes and townscapes, I’m just setting everything indoors with the minimum of background. Sometimes I need the rest.

by Andrew Pilcher

One-upmanship

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Anything Smith can do, Jones can do better,
Jones can do anything better than Smith
Yes she can, yes she can,
Yes she can, yes she can,
Yes she can, yes she can, yes she caaaaaaaaaannnnn!

by Andrew Pilcher

Collared

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First of all, hello, and welcome to Smith.ink, Smith’s new home on the web. If you’re new here, ‘Smith’ is a cartoon strip about a cat called Smith. And that’s really all you need to know. If you really need to find out more, click on the menu in the sidebar or click on the folder icon to the top of the sidebar. To see the 700-odd cartoons that preceded this one visit smithcomic.blogspot.co.uk or www.gocomics.com/smith.

You’ve actually come in at the tail end of a storyline that has been going on since early July. Smith and his sister, Jones, escaped from a cattery while their owners were on holiday and spent most of the summer trying to find their way back home. Now they’ve finally reached home they’ve been rewarded for their efforts by being given ID collars. And they’re not popular. Now read on…

by Andrew Pilcher

(Pause)

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Harold Pinter, playwright, screenwriter, political activist, occasional dickhead, and adjective.

Famed

for the

 
pauses

in his stage work

originally meant to help actors act his plays in a more natural manner than tended to be fashionable in the 1960s

but which became more stylised and

mannerist

over the years

to the point that when he once gave a reading of one of his monologues, everyone complained because he was reading it too fast.

by Andrew Pilcher

3am

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This happens every night in the Pilcher household. Billy and Bella still retain their standoffishness during the day, refusing to be picked up and spurning outstretched hands of welcome, but at night it all changes. At 2 or 3 in the morning both cats leap onto the bed, purring their heads off, and demanding our attention. We’ve learned the best way to deal with it is to sleep with one arm outside the bedclothes, then we can pet them as demanded, with the minimum of disturbance. I swear Linda’s worked out how to scratch Billy’s head and still keep sleeping!

by Andrew Pilcher

Going all Philip K Dick on your ass

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One for all you comics philosophers out there: if only half a tree appears in a cartoon strip, does the rest of the tree actually exist? Is Smith’s home real or is it just set dressing that is assembled as required for each frame? By extension, how do we actually know the rest of the world beyond our vision is actually there, or is it a simulation assembled as required to give us the illusion of freedom? Happy Christmas.

I’d have some photos for you of Billy and Bella going bonkers in and around our Christmas Tree, but my camera’s run out of battery and I’ve left the charger in the States. (Assuming the States are really there, of course…) Bella’s favourite trick is to remove the tinsel while leaving all the ornaments undisturbed. That and playing with a particularly springy lower branch for hours on end.

by Andrew Pilcher

Lost in bed

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We have one of those memory foam mattresses. My wife loves it – while I’ve grown to accept it over the years. Given the choice, I’d just have a futon and a duvet – nice and simple and hard as a steel plate under a layer of cotton. But that’s not going to happen.

by Andrew Pilcher

Meta

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Just playing with the medium.

by Andrew Pilcher

The Comet of the Century?

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Remember the fuss that was being made about Comet Ison earlier this year? It was going to be the comet of the century. Its tail was going to be so long it would wrap three times around the planet. It was going to cause the end of the world and a plague of frogs. It was going to outshine the moon and be visible during daylight. It was possibly going to very bright. It was going to look not quite so bright but pretty bright nevertheless. It was going to look like a dim hairy star. It was going to look like a big smudge. It was going to be visible to the naked eye. At the time of writing (15 November) it might possibly be visible if you have very strong binoculars, a tripod, and a place to view it from which is at least 100 miles away from the nearest light source.

Nevertheless, lets pretend all that never happened. This strip was inspired by Smudge and Cholmondeley’s reaction to fireworks whenever they saw them through the front room windows. They loved them and tried to paw at them before they fizzled out. This was based on me imagining what their reaction would be to a comet which just hung there in the sky, the way that comets do. Well, the ones that can be bothered to put on a proper show anyway.

by Andrew Pilcher

“Wonderful chap. All of them.”

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Quotation from Brigadier Alexander Lethbridge-Stewart, in the 20th Anniversary special: “The Five Doctors”.

The big day was yesterday, so here’s  my tribute to Doctor Who. Here are all eleven main incarnations so far of the Doctor, interpreted as cats. For the latecomers to the party (hello, America) they are William Hartnell (1963-66), Patrick Troughton (1966-69), Jon Pertwee (1970-74), Tom Baker (1974-81), Peter Davison (1981-84), Colin Baker (1984-86), Sylvester McCoy (1987-89, 1996), Paul McGann (1996), Christopher Eccleston (2005), David Tenant (2005-10), Matt Smith (2010-2013). I’ve not included Peter Capadi as he won’t be the Doctor till Christmas Day. I’ve also left out Peter Cushing’s movie Doctor, Richard E Grant’s animated Doctor, and the Valeyard, a curdled version of future Doctor only ever seen in the Colin Baker story “the Trial of a Time Lord”. John Hurt’s ‘War Doctor’ has also been left out because at the time of writing (early November) we don’t know where he fits into the Doctors timeline. Is he Doctor 8 towards the end of that incarnation, Doctor 9 before he shaved his head to become Christopher Eccleston, or a hitherto unknown incarnation the Doctor can’t admit to himself ever happened?

The  caricatures I’m happiest with are the ones of Tom Baker (“all teeth and curls” as he used to say), Colin Baker (alien and wonderfully self-satisfied), and Chris Eccleston (“Fantastic!”). And of course, I couldn’t draw Matt Smith without his Fez. He wears a Fez now. Fezzes are cool.

The first two Doctors are, of course, in black and white.