Erin Reads: Sam’s Strip

[erinptah]

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.

Comments

[hokuton_punch]

Oooooh, that does sound interesting! And the samples are fun.

[stepnix]

this rules

[genarti]

Oh wow, this looks delightful!

[conuly]

Better to burn out too early than to fade forever, at least?

[jesse_the_k]

Intriguing that this work is also available in French and Danish editions. Perhaps Mort Walker Knows A Guy?

Very happy to report my local library is very generous when it comes to comics, graphic novels, et cetera, and it holds a copy! Yours may too, or you can inter-library-loan it

[acorn_squash]

I placed a hold so fast.

I'm actually a little surprised this one didn't catch on with the Calvin & Hobbes crowd. Bill Watterson loved style parodies!

Oh yeah, newspaper strips turning generic is a Thing. Did you ever read the really early years of Dilbert? It was actually good for a while! Had all this cool speculative fiction stuff and everything. Really started going downhill when it turned into an office comedy.

(And then of course the author went full MRA, but I quit reading looong before that point.)

(Oh, and I guess he's racist now too? Seriously, the guy sucks.)

[erinptah]

Watterson did great parodies, but they were also grounded in Calvin's relatable feelings and interests -- I think the baseline of Sam's Strip was probably too esoteric, you know? Things like "Sam digs through the comic-prop closet to find a dust cloud to make his car go faster" aren't a fantasy sequence or a metaphor for something mundane, that's just what's physically happening in the world of the strip.

I've read a bunch of Dilbert from the era before the pointy-haired boss's hair got pointy! Would not have said it changed that much, though? Full disclosure, I also quit reading while it was still good (and while Scott Adams still seemed in touch with reality). I've heard the whispers of its decline, and have been content not to look into it further :/

[acorn_squash]

It's possible I just dislike office comedies.

[lb_lee]

Man, I was NEVER tempted to try newspaper strips, that shit is HARD and far as I can tell, the name of the game is all about making something with as few complaints as possible. It seems to very much be the vanilla ice cream and cheese pizza thing of “few people are super into it, but that’s what you get for a big party because nobody will hate it.”

It’s why more niche newspapers seem to get better comics... but there’s also less money to be made. (God, I wish I had gotten to read more Eyebeam, a comic that led to my alma mater electing Eyebeam’s imaginary friend as their student body president in real life...) I got to see Sam Hurt, the Eyebeam creator at his home studio once. Want to know what his bread and butter was? Coloring Frank and Ernest and stuff.

[erinptah]

Mmmyep. As a reader, there are newspaper strips I really love, and some of them do genuinely innovative or beautiful things with the format! But I definitely couldn't stay in that box enough to ever create one.