Saturday 30 March 2013

Millie Week 82: Mon 30 March - Sat 4 April 1992

Having just had two weeks of the parping daffodil in Smith, meet his progenitor in Millie, Des the weed. He was introduced in the previous year when Richard first built his window box, and he was to return every spring afterwards.

The real reason Des got invented was because I wasn't allowed to have a cat in the strip - and after a few months of solid real-world storylines I occasionally needed to let rip with the bit of hard core whimsy of the kind that only animal characters will let you get away with. 

It's interesting to see what comics editors will let you get away with. In the fifth strip, the phrase 'Oh go pollinate yourself' was passed without a murmur. However, I did get a phone call from the comics editor asking whether 'vacuole' was a rude word.

Friday 29 March 2013

Easter Traditions

Today is the first day of the Easter Holiday in the UK - we get Good Friday and Easter Monday off. Most people use the four days of consecutive freedom as a chance to do some unnecessary DIY. But there are other Easter traditions as well.

No bank holiday is complete without at least one showing of The Great Escape. We're not quite at the level of ABC putting on 'A Christmas Story' on a loop on Christmas Eve, but we're nearly there. The advent of multi-channel TV in Britain means that somewhere on the EPG you are guaranteed to see Steve McQueen failing to escape from the Nazis.

The correct time to eat Easter eggs is a bone of contention between me and Linda. I've been brought up to believe you're not allowed to eat them until Easter Sunday. Linda has been brought up to believe you can eat them as soon as they turn up on the shelves of Asda. Honestly, did Christ die for nothing?

Wednesday 27 March 2013

Razzzzzz

We know a song about that, don't we? Here's Spike Milligan, in a horned helmet that suits him just right, doing 'The Raspberry Song - Everything is Fresh Today'.

Monday 25 March 2013

Floral Dance

If you don't know the tune, here it is. Imagine, at the so-called height of punk, this was number two in the hit parade in 1977. It was only kept off the top of the charts by Paul McCartney's Mull of Kintyre.

Saturday 23 March 2013

Millie Week 81: Mon 23 - Sat 28 March 1992

I know nothing about computer games - it's an area of popular culture that has completely passed me by. A few months after writing this series of strips I thought I'd try a Sega megadrive console, in an attempt to see what the fuss was about. Dare I say it, most computer games are deadly dull - I can't see the attraction at all.

The long string of figures Millie reads out of the paper were TV+ codes. The idea was that you programmed the codes into your VCR and it would record the programme you wanted, if by some miracle you had managed to input the long string of 16 figures correctly. It was an attempt at user friendliness which was anything but.

Friday 22 March 2013

Guest Star: Sooky Rottweiler

I've been very tardy in responding to Cynthia l'Ecuyer generously giving Smith and Jones an Acadian summer vacation in her strip about a year ago. Here's Sooky Rottweiler's guest spot in mine...

This strip also explains why humans can't hear the parping of the daffodils.

Wednesday 20 March 2013

Colonel Bogey

Yes, the music actually is Colonel Bogey. All the notes, not just the ones that fit into an airhorn.

Monday 18 March 2013

Return of the parping daffodils

Well, it's spring in the cartoon, even if the warm weather hasn't reached the real world yet. Anyone who has linked to my Facebook page will know that I was trapped in my car for five hours last week, trying to get home through a 'snowstorm'. As blizzards go it was pretty pathetic, maybe an inch fell, but it was enough to cause accidents on all the roads into Hastings, and stop the traffic in all directions. I was lucky enough to be marooned on Battle High Street, so the chap in the car behind me did his weekly shop while the traffic wasn't moving, and I popped into a pub for a bit.

If it's spring that means the parping daffodils are back...

Sunday 17 March 2013

Billy the Cat

I didn't name Billy - he had that name already when I got him and his sister from the rescue centre.
However, there are lots of cartoon strips that have been named Billy the cat. And every time I do a google search more seem to come out of the woodwork.


Here's the original...

and here are a few I've found so far.


First off, Billy the Cat, the Beano's late sixties version of Spiderman. This is scanned from the Beano Book 1970 - the first book I ever bought with my own money. (I remember saving up the eight shillings and sixpence it cost in old pennies the size of cartwheels and then dragging a big bag full of coins down to the newsagents to buy it. Eight shillings and sixpence is nowadays the equivalent of 42.5p.) Billy is an eleven year old schoolboy by day, attending an academy in Burnham, one of those DC Thompson anytowns. However, by night he dons leathers and a crash helmet with whiskers and becomes Billy the Cat, Burnham's acrobatic crime fighter, inventing Parkour thirty years early. If the scan makes no sense, it because the story runs across the spread and I've only been able to scan the right hand side.


Meanwhile, from Belgium, here is another Billy the Cat. Serialised in the children's magazine Spirou, the comic follows the story of Billy, a normal schoolboy who often pranks and bullies animals. However, early in the first comic album, he is killed when he carelessly runs out in the street and is hit by a car. Told that his chances of getting into Heaven are slim due to his misdeeds, he is given a second chance by being returned to earth as a young cat. The comic follows Billy's attempts to adapt to living as a cat and chronicle his misadventures while he interacts with other animals. There's a TV series that's been doing the rounds as well, though neither the books or the TV show have yet reached the UK.


Finally, this guy needs no introduction.

Saturday 16 March 2013

Millie Week 80: Mon 16 - Sat 21 March 1992

Roger's uncanny ability to portray teachers from my own schooldays is once again on display here. Mr Crawley, in the third strip, looks uncannily like Mr Goodale, the fearsome Biology master that took me through to my own O Levels. He was known to all the kids as 'Skull', because his head resembled one of the exhibits in the cases that lined the walls of the Biology lab. He was one of the shrinking number of senior masters that still wore a gown to school. However terrifying his aspect and fearsome his reputation may have been, I always found him to be a thoroughly decent chap.

Mr Moss is based on another teacher whose real name thankfully escapes me. He was known to everyone as 'Davros', after the creator of the Daleks in the Tom Baker Doctor Who story 'Genesis of the Daleks'. Here's a hint to all teachers - an atmosphere of abject terror is not conducive to effective learning. I ended up flunking chemistry.

Wednesday's strip is missing. Here's the script.

1. As Tuesday, Millie in the playground at school, in position to give directions to lost parents. She's just sent one couple off in one direction, only to find Mum and Dad have returned from wherever she had sent them to. Mum is visibly annoyed, though Dad couldn't care less whether he sees anyone or not.
DAD: MILLIE, YOU GAVE US THE WRONG DIRECTIONS TO THE SCIENCE WING!
MILLIE: SO?
MUM: WE'RE GOING TO SEE THOSE TEACHERS OF YOURS WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT, YOU KNOW...

2. Dad tries the soft soap approach.
DAD: WHY DON'T YOU WANT US TO SEE THEM? IT'S NOT AS IF YOU'RE A BAD PUPIL OR ANYTHING...

3. Millie stands up for her teenage priniples. The voice of reason doesn't seem to be getting thru.
MILLIE: I DON'T LIKE THE IDEA OF PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT ME AND DECIDING WHAT THEY THINK'S GOOD FOR ME BEHIND MY BACK!
DAD: THAT'S LIFE, MILLIE - IT'S ALWAYS GOING TO HAPPEN...

4. Millie walks off in a huff. Mum and Dad follow her.
DAD: NOW WHERE ARE YOU GOING?
MILLIE: I'M GOING TO RING YOUR BOSS TO CHECK UP ON HOW YOU'RE DOING AT WORK...





Friday 15 March 2013

Giant Raft Spiders

This (click here) was the story that inspired this set of arachnophobic strips. I heard about it on a nature programme on BBC Radio 4 while driving home from a theatre rehearsal one night, and it set me thinking, how happy am I to have these monsters next door? Especially when they're giant spiders that have been hand reared by a mad scientist. Money spiders are great fun but these are hulking four-inch brutes that can walk on water. There is a stream at the bottom of my garden - I don't want these things walking over, entering my house and chewing my face off! (I may be exaggerating slightly about the face-chewing).

Wednesday 13 March 2013

Tuffet

I've taken the meaning of 'tuffet' to be a grassy hillock, or 'knoll' if you will. A tuffet can also be taken to be one of those hard rectangular cushions you get to kneel on in church.

Monday 11 March 2013

500

Yes, this strip is number 500. I've been posting Smith on GoComics Comic Sherpa site every Monday, Wednesday and Friday since 1st January 2010. It's been hard work but it's been worth it.

This would probably be the best time to announce my plans for the coming year. I need a rest and a bit of a recharge, so I'm planning to take a bit of a hiatus in the second half of the year. Don't Panic - Smith won't be disappearing, but I'm going to be changing it's format for a bit, and experimenting with the longer format of Sunday strips.

Smith will continue at its current frequency until the beginning of August. Then, starting on August 4, it will appear once a week on Sundays until January 2, 2014, when it will go back to it's three times a week schedule.

I'll be spending the time that buys me putting together some Smith E-publications ready for next Christmas. I'll also be trying to piece together a cohesive plot for a new Mike Pike adventure.

OK, I've written about it. Now I have to do it!

Money Spiders are tiny spiders. They're so small (no more that 2mm across, and frequently smaller) that they can travel great distances by ballooning - spinning a thread of spider silk and then letting the wind catch it. Occasionally you will find one in your hair, or, more likely, hanging from a thread just in front of your nose. This is taken to be a sign of good luck, as there was an old superstition that if a money spider was found running on you, it will have come to weave you a set of new clothes, meaning financial good fortune. No-one kills money spiders - you just let them run around your hand for a bit (for some reason, they prefer running uphill to down) and then brush them off so they can balloon somewhere else.

Sunday 10 March 2013

Breakthrough!

The big news is that the cats will now allow themselves to be petted outside of the wardrobe. I've been trying to get photos of this incredible event all week, but it's hard to operate a camera with one hand and stroke a cat with the other. I even managed to pick up Annabelle with no complaints for a short while yesterday. They still need persuading, and Annabelle is less wary than Billy is - in fact whenever Annabelle is being scratched on the head and purring her head off, Billy usually sits to one side wearing an expression of absolute betrayal.

Billy has even started sleeping on the bed with us - though he stays well out of reach.

Here's this week's crop of photos...

We've been resuscitating an old laptop of Linda's this weekend. Bella has been fascinated it. Here she is helping with the installation of some software, and about to find the button that sends the laptop into hibernation. (PS - the answer to the question posed by the front cover of The Week is a definite No.) 
Aha! Found it!
Bella, just after having her head scratched. Billy is underneath a La-z-boy footstool, otherwise known as his cage of security.
I saw what you did to my sister. I am not pleased.
A relaxed Billy. He had just shifted from a characteristic Billy pose, which I have yet to capture on camera, the squashed frog. I have yet to see a cat get as flat as Billy can - he likes to stretch out as long as he can make himself on the floor and then splay his back legs out to either side of him.


Saturday 9 March 2013

Millie Week 79: Mon 9 - Sat 14 March 1992


More cartoons written with the specific purpose of integrating the parents into the strip. By this time Crippen Comprehensive had turned into an amalgam that was equal parts Grange Hill, the children's TV soap opera, and Skinners, my old Grammar school in Tunbridge Wells. It was probably as outdated in its portrayal of school life as the Bash Street Kids was to me when I read the Beano as a kid.

Friday 8 March 2013

99 bonk!

What goes 99-bonk? A centipede with a wooden leg. Ai thang yow.

Wednesday 6 March 2013

Show

This is what comes of living with an American, you pick up their speech patterns without realising it. No-one would say "Watching your rodent show, Jones?" in England. We'd say "Watching your rodent programme". Shows are light entertainment, but a documentary is definitely a programme.

I'm OK with spiders, but my wife isn't. I think she's not used to the size of the house spiders we get in England. In New Mexico the spiders tend to be fairly small and crunchy - in England they can be two inches across and substantial enough for their footfalls to be audible on parquet flooring. They're harmless (unless you're a fly) but they can give you a funny turn if you unexpectedly find one in the bath.

If you want to make me run screaming from the room in abject trouser dampening terror, just show me a picture of a Praying Mantis. I don't know what it is about them that terrifies me - may be it's the fact that that head has no right to stay balanced on shoulders that small. That and the way they STARE...

Monday 4 March 2013

Life on Earth

I dropped into the Tunbridge Wells branch of Waterstones* in my lunchbreak a couple of weeks ago, to find the place absolutely heaving with shoppers. You couldn't reach any of the bookshelves because there were tight packs of people sitting down on the floor taking up any space they could find. A few teenage boys stood blinking in the middle of the biography section, intimidated by the smell of expensive coffee and paper, trying to decide whether to stay or to flee. A line of people stretched out of the shop, up the pedestrian precinct and around the corner into Monson Road. In sub zero temperatures. Obviously there was a book signing about to happen, but who could it be? Normally three people turn up to a Waterstones signing, if the author's lucky. I remember being the only person to turn up to a signing by Paul Theroux once, and us both being very embarrassed about it. Obviously this must have been a draw several notches up from the best travel writer of the past half century... who could it be?

It was Sir David Attenborough, broadcaster, naturalist and national treasure. If I hadn't had to return to work I would have joined the back of the queue myself. He wasn't due to turn up at the store for another two hours!

If you haven't seen his latest Africa series yet, I recommend it. Then join the queue to buy the book.

*Sort of a UK version of Barnes and Noble, the bookshop chain that has eaten all the other bookshops.

Saturday 2 March 2013

Millie Week 78: Mon 2 - Sat 7 March 1992



This week was written to order, after The Daily Mirror decided they wanted more of the parents in the strip, and asked me to define their characters a bit more.

Carry on Senior Obstetrician was never made, as the Carry On series of films stuttered to an end in the late 70s. But it was only a matter of time before they got around to it, having already produced Carry On Nurse, Carry On Doctor, Carry On Again Doctor and Carry On Matron.

The last strip defines one of the major contradictions of that time - the strictest parents tended to be the ex-hippies. You would have thought they would have been happy to see the flowering of the second Summer of Love. (Actually, by 1992, we must have been at around the sixth Summer of Love, and Grunge was waiting around the corner to kill it off with a combination of checked shirts and adolescent whining.)