First post

My comic, 'Smith', started appearing on GoComics one year ago with the strip you see above. In that time two things have surprised me:

1) I'm still doing it.
2) It's getting a following.

Thanks to everyone responsible for item number two - you are the ones that ensure item number one keeps happening.

For those that don't know the strip, it's a thrice weekly strip about a couple of domestic cats, Smith, the Seal Point Siamese, and his sister, Jones, who is more of a fudge-point than a chocolate point. You can find it at www.gocomics.com/Smith

It's based on a couple of cats that used to live next door to me when I was growing up in Tunbridge Wells in the late 70s. I didn't have a cat of my own at the time, so I effectively adopted these two. When their owner moved out of town and took the cats with them I started drawing cartoons of them, and this developed into a series of unpublished daily strips that I drew religiously until a year after I left school and had to join the real world.

Fast forward 28 years, and they're back. In the intervening time I'd gone through a series of dead end jobs, finally found a niche as a graphic artist and production manager at a magazine publishing company, concurrently scripted a daily comic strip, 'Millie' for the Daily Mirror in London, discovered the theatre, and moved to Hastings. Millie had finished in the Mirror 15 years ago (curse you Piers Morgan!) It was time to get back to the pens and see if I still had it.

It appears I did. You are here.

I'll be doing several things in this blog:

a) I'll be providing commentary on new strips as they appear, explaining some of the more Brit-centric references to my largely US-based audience, and telling the story of how they came to be.
b) I'll be posting some of the original Smith cartoons from the 80s.
c) I'll occasionally post some of my previous strips, Millie, Mike Pike and Riverfields, and anything else from my filing cabinet that looks interesting.
d) Anything else that takes my fancy. It's my blog - so I can be as self indulgent as I like. So, ner!

To be continued...