Going all Philip K Dick on your ass

One for all you comics philosophers out there: if only half a tree appears in a cartoon strip, does the rest of the tree actually exist? Is Smith’s home real or is it just set dressing that is assembled as required for each frame? By extension, how do we actually know the rest of the world beyond our vision is actually there, or is it a simulation assembled as required to give us the illusion of freedom? Happy Christmas.

I’d have some photos for you of Billy and Bella going bonkers in and around our Christmas Tree, but my camera’s run out of battery and I’ve left the charger in the States. (Assuming the States are really there, of course…) Bella’s favourite trick is to remove the tinsel while leaving all the ornaments undisturbed. That and playing with a particularly springy lower branch for hours on end.

Splat

Originally published 20 September 2010

Growing up around the apple orchards of Kent, I sort of got used to this. In Hastings the equivalent problem is seagulls.

Someone's nicked the top half of the tree

We have some rather over enthusiastic tree surgeons here in Hastings. I have a conifer directly opposite my balcony, and I was warned that it was going to be trimmed by the management of our block of flats. Fair enough, I thought, it needs to be thinned down a little bit. What I wasn't expecting to find when I got home one evening was this...

Seagulls now walk along the top of the tree, tormenting Bella with their succulent just-out-of-reachness, and the young tree just behind to the right has since toppled over in the gales earlier this year, providing the tree with a new top.

Millie Week 67: Mon 16th - Sat 21st Dec 1991

Yes, you have seen strip number four before. Smith reused it a couple of Christmases ago. Here's that version... Interesting to see that when I'm drawing it myself I reverse the dark panels and the light panels so I have less to do.

There's a strip missing from my scrapbook again, though in this case I think it's a pasting-in error. It's Tuesday's strip, and the script goes thusly...

1. The sitting room - Millie's house. Millie watches as Richard manhandles a trussed up Christmas tree into the room.
MILLIE: YOU'VE GOT A REAL TREE, RICHARD!
RICHARD: YES - I'M FED UP WITH THE ARTIFICIAL ONES.

2. Millie holds the earth filled pot that the tree stands up in, and ensures that the tree stays uproght while Richard puts a pair of scissors to the bit of string that is holding the branches to the trunk.
RICHARD: MIND YOU, THERE IS ONE PROBLEM WITH THEM.

3. He suts the string. The branches spring up violently and needles go flying. Richard is caught full-on by the fallout. Millie, by the base, misses the worst of it.
SFX: SPROING!

4. Millie stands up to observe a now naked Christmas tree, and a Richard who looks like the victim of a natural materials only acupuncturist.
RICHARD: THEY DO TEND TO SHED THEIR NEEDLES A BIT.

Millie Week 16; Mon 17 - Wed 19 Dec 1990

I collect daft aftershave names. All of the ones the girls find in the strip are genuine, apart from Butch, which I borrowed from one of The Goodies fake adverts (though researching it now, it turned out to be for tobacco rather than aftershave).

If you do click on the link, remember this is from 1972. Standards have changed for the better since then. Incidentally, it's a clip from the intermission for their 'Kitten Kong' show.

This year's Christmas tree strip

Partially inspired by the weeping angels in Doctor Who... all the action takes place in the dark.