Stre-e-e-etch

Inspired by Billy, who is a very elastic cat. I've never seen any cat stretch to the lengths that he can manage.

Incidentally, if you're wondering why I'm not drawing these Sunday strips in the traditional three-bank funny pages format, it's because I don't think that's how Smith will be seen in the future. Print is dead, and the parameters we have to work to nowadays are not those that suit newspaper production, but those that suit smart phones and tablets. It's an interesting space to work with, and it's let me try several ideas that just wouldn't have worked before. This is a strip I could never have done in the daily format.

See you on Sunday...

Actually, the real reason I'm doing this is so I can have some time to prepare a few things.

1) I'm looking into the feasibility of producing some e-books, one for each year of the strip so far. There's a trade off between affordability and image quality which I'm struggling to reconcile - I want to be able to sell an book with about 125 strips in it which will display a reasonable image quality on a tablet computer, and keep it at a price point of £1.99. If all goes well, these will be available in time for the e-book downloading bonanza just after Christmas, when everyone's filling up their shiny new tablets and e-readers.

2) I'll also be preparing a new Smith website, based on the Wordpress framework, with lots more features than Blogger can provide. More news about this as it solidifies. ETA, 1st January 2014.

3) I'll be looking into whether I can produce a printed Smith treasury at all. It would be lovely to produce a book, that would be something permanent. E-books and websites are all very well, but all it takes is one well aimed solar flare or terrorist with an EMP device, and anything dependent on electronic or magnetic storage will be wiped clean in an instant.

(At this point I'd like to welcome my new readers from the NSA and MI5 who will have honed in on the trigger words 'terrorist' and 'EMP device'. Nice to see you.)

4) I also have an idea for a spin-off book. But that'll be kept under wraps for now...

Smith will to his normal Monday, Wednesday and Friday schedule on Monday 6th January 2014. In the meantime, there will be a brand new Sunday strip every, er, Sunday. And for those that missed the first year of the strip, I'll be reposting that on Sherpa, and here on the blog (where it hasn't appeared yet), Monday-Saturday, starting this Monday, the 5th of August. And Millie will continue to appear here on Saturdays.