Inevitably...

Right. That's that little fad officially over. Next week: Tail Jive Gangnam Style.*
*Not really.

Tail Jive, now in colour

Here's the first of the Sundays, and what could be more appropriate than to begin with a redraw of the first Smith strip ever to be published. The version below has been seen before on this blog, it was first published in the 1981 edition of the Skinners school magazine, "the Leopard". I much prefer this redraw, which has overtones of Andy Warhol about it, and a minimum of movement lines. Besides, Smith's learned a few new dance moves over the years...

Smith's first appearance in print

Here, taken from the Autumn 1980 issue of The Leopard, the magazine of the Skinners' School, Tunbridge Wells, is the first ever published Smith cartoon. It appeared when I was 16, and was credited to A. J. Pilcher of Form 61BL.

Let's put that in perspective. When this was published, The Empire Strikes Back had just been released, the Moscow Olympics had just taken place, there were still hostages in the US embassy in Iran and everyone was convinced that we'd die in a nuclear exchange between the US and the USSR at some point in the not too distant future. Ah, happy carefree days!

It's remarkable how little Smith has changed since then (apart from the loss of the pretentious teenage handwriting).