Pinkfish and cartoon science

There's been a lot of speculation about the kind of dye that Jones was covered in. Well, let me put your minds at rest. It's a special pink cartoon dye that only comes off in contact with pond water. Cartoon chemistry is like cartoon physics - it doesn't work in quite the same way as it does in the real world. We've already discussed the way that gravity only acts on a coyote two eye-blinks after becoming aware of walking off the edge of a cliff. Another example is that if a dog and a man in a green shirt encounter a ghost in a creepy room, that room will immediately elongate so that the dog and man and flee the ghost for thirty seconds without ever leaving the room. A side effect of this is that a series of identical light fittings will appear at regular intervals along said room.

Thought so...

Jones returns to her normal colour next week.

Kebabs

The truth about those fuzzy pencil cases is that they're actually the skins of strange Turkish creatures with no internal organs whatsoever, called Doner Kebabs. They've been hunted almost to extinction now, and those sweating cylinders of meat that you see in kebab shops nowadays have to be made of reconstituted lamb. But in the old days they were easy hunting, all you needed was a skewer and you could feed a small market town full of violent drunks for an entire night with one.

Glow in the dark

Dedicated to anyone who has to struggle with cats on the bed at night.

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.

Race for the punchline...

If someone on the comments section at GoComics doesn't get to this punchline before this gets published I shall be very surprised!

Fashion

Drawn by someone who tends to buy clothes cheap just as they've fallen out of fashion and then only throws them away just as tiresome teeter-totter of trend falls back in line with what I've bought. I'm all for looking smart, but I have no time for worrying about the exact width of my lapels this week.

And don't get me started on Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister. What is the point of buying clothes there when you can get exactly the same stuff for a tenth of the price in Wal-Mart? - only without the advertising all over the front, and in a shop with proper lighting.

Pink!

This and the following couple of weeks of strips are based on some old ones I did in 1981. I've held the remix of this storyline until now so it can coincide with America's National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Last year at this time, this happened. Even if it doesn't happen again this year, why not donate? And in the interests of balance, as some people complain that breast cancer is a glamorous cancer that gets all the attention, why not visit here as well, to find out about something that affects men even more than breast cancer affects women. And then enjoy the next few strips, which won't mention cancer at all...