Another one of Bella’s favourite toys was her Fishee. It’s a blue fish plush toy that came with a MacDonalds Happy Meal and she was devoted to it until she lost it one night by putting it somewhere completely irretrievable, and we’ve never been able to find it since. I’ve given it to Chumley, as it think it suits him, much to Smudge’s disgust.
Tag / Smudge
Splatch!
Daytime TV
If you’ve never seen the Jeremy Kyle show on TV consider yourself to be very lucky. It’s hard to tell who are the most damaged individuals on his show – the members of the underclass he parades on the studio floor or the spittle flecked presenter who feeds off their misery. Of course, he’s started appearing in the States. Who knows, maybe he’ll be rejected by them quickly as Piers Morgan was.
Drone
Poit!
Scenes from the Sherpa Halloween Party
Mutter mutter… when I was a kid… mutter mutter… commercialisation of Halloween… mutter mutter… racks of flammable Halloween costumes made from petrochemicals in supermarkets… mutter mutter… Haribo bogies… mutter mutter… imported American customs bastardising our perfectly good European ones… mutter mutter… trick or treat… mutter mutter… I blame ET… mutter mutter…
Cats have plenty of connections to Halloween, so it’s fine for them to celebrate October 31st. But there’s no need for them to wear a costume.
Note that Chumley, bless his gentle hearted soul, doesn’t quote get the idea of Halloween and is wearing a pair of Mickey ears, mainly because Alison Ward is wearing them at the Halloween party in her strip.
A pride of Smiths
Here’s a poser for you – how would you draw pride? We know the cartoon shorthand for things like speed and fear, but pride is a bit more difficult. I’ve gone for the DC Thompson solution – a few radiating lines and the word ‘Pride’ over Smith’s head.
Labels
Today’s strip is brought to you by Concerned Citizens of America or whatever nutty right-wing organisation is cluttering up my inbox with its ravings at the moment. The sad thing is, occasionally they have a point.
Note Smith’s phone number, which starts with a Hastings code and then goes unreadable because people actually ring numbers they find in comic strips.
The problem with the blog site disappearing for days on end seems to have been solved. A bit of advice – if your hosts give you a bit of web caching software for free and tell you it will make your website faster to load, don’t believe them. There is a reason why it is free. Avoid the W3-Cache plug-in for WordPress, folks.
Hegemony
A shout out to the original Patrick MacGoohan series The Prisoner here. And a slight problem with the positioning of the speech balloons in these Panavision frames – Smudge appears to be talking out of her bum. You’ll notice I switch to traditionally shaped square panels in Wednesday’s strip.
Oh, and I get to use the word ‘Hegemony’ here, which is a strange thing to be proud of, I know, but I am anyway.
12 years a cat
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.