Retrofitting

It was 1981 when I first drew this series of cartoons. Punk was a recent memory and dayglo was still high street fashion (see Fiorrucci, early editions of i-D, Camden and Kensington markets, and the works of X-Ray Specs). In the original I ended the strip with the second frame - that was a good enough punchline for then, and there were enough leftover punks* littering the streets of Tunbridge Wells for it still to be funny. Things have moved on since, and now it is mainstream to be artificial - hence the addition of the third frame.

Here's the original... The part of Smudge is here played by Perdi - the Smudge in the cartoons took on a lot of her characteristics, including the wall fixation. Note self-conscious teenage lettering, and the wandering white nose patch on Perdi.