Erin Reads: Sam’s Strip

Randomly stumbled over the omnibus collection of this at the library…immediately took it home and blazed through the whole thing.

It’s a short-lived newspaper comic from the 60s about characters who know they’re running a comic. The fourth wall is in tatters, the meta jokes are decades ahead of their time, the crossover gags are exquisite. And beautifully drawn! Apparently people at the time were sure the parodies and cameos were an elaborate copy-and-paste job, or at least traced — but no, the artist was just that diligent about recreating the styles of the characters getting cameo’d.

It was the brainchild of Mort Walker (creator of the army comedy Beetle Bailey and its suburban spinoff Hi and Lois) and Jerry Dumas (who by then was his assistant/co-producer, and who did the art for Sam’s Strip). Honestly, I would put Hi and Lois on a list of the most blandly-generic newspaper strips, so I’m kinda surprised Walker had something this weird and innovative in him.

…Although it sounds like he’s not the one I should be judging, because the bland stuff was what sold. Sam’s Strip was beloved by the readers who got the jokes, but never caught on with a wider audience, and got canceled within less than two years.

(Then the character designs got repurposed for a much-more-generic comedy strip about small-town cops, and that was a hit.)

Wikipedia has a Sam’s Strip article, this blog has scans of a bunch of individual strips, and this omnibus has the whole run with fun notes/annotations. If you get the opportunity, give it a look.