Airing cupboard 9

If nobody gets to the punchline before I do I shall be sooo surprised... However, at the time of writing we're two weeks in, and it still seems to be holding up. If anyone wants a real puzzle to try to work out, watch the last episode of Sherlock and try to figure out how Sherlock survived the fall from the top of Barts hospital...

Airing cupboard 8

This makes my reasons for this storyline even more blatant. Half the strip comprises of white space! If it's any consolation, the colouring of the next month's strips is proving to be a real pig and is taking much longer than it usually does. What goes around comes around...

Airing cupboard 7

I'm pretty amazed by the reaction this series of cartoons had been getting. What I thought was a rather cheap way of buying myself some vacation time by running some Smith-lite strips (in much the same way that Dr Who occasionally has a 'Doctor-lite' episode to make the workload for actor playing the Doctor more reasonable) has turned out to be a real nail biter for some. Now, I don't want to be accused of pricking the bubble of tension that I've inadvertantly created here, but I'd just like to assure everyone that Smith will emerge from the Chilean mine airing cupboard none the worse for wear on Friday. Remember, Smith is a cartoon cat, and cartoon cats run on cartoon biology in much the same way that cartoon road runners and coyotes run on cartoon physics. No cats were hurt during the creation of this strip.

Airing cupboard 6

OK. Next week is the last week of this...

Airing Cupboard 5

... a bit stringy though.

Airing cupboard 4

This series is actually another redraw of set of cartoons I did as a teenager in 1982. It originally consisted of twelve strips (or two weeks worth, as I had the time to do dailies in those days), but I've shortened it a bit to allow for the current three a week schedule. Some of the more jejeune reflections on society and life have been excised, but this one has survived as I still agree with it.

Airing Cupboard 3

Airing Cupboard 2

Aha! The master plan is revealed. And I buy myself some time to go on holiday...

Airing Cupboard

This little tribute to Charles Schulz introduces a series of cartoons which could be drawn and coloured really quickly, and which gave me the chance to visit Linda's folks over Christmas. Cartoonists can't go on holiday - if we want to take some time off we have to work twice as hard as usual to create a backlog of cartoons to run while we are away.

However, there isn't much to do in Clovis, New Mexico. I drew February's strips while I was in the States, and will be coloring them overthe next week. I also wrote loads of gags, and now have the strip written until Mid August.

Like a lot of things in my strips, the airing cupboard is based on one from my childhood, with sliding doors and a boiler inside it. It was in my bedroom, and used to terrify me with the strange noises it would make at night.