The Sunday Funnies - Sam's Strip!

Sam's Strip by the team of Mort Walker and Jerry Dumas hit the newspaper funny pages in late 1961 and held onto a birth there for just a couple of years. It was a comic strip loved by cartoonists and some editors across the nation, but never by a significant number of the reading public to make it a going concern long term. What makes it funny is inside information about the construction of comics themselves and the devices and gimmicks which are used to compose and communicate through that form. Sam is the titular star and he occupies a comic strip which serves often as his workplace and features file drawers and closets filled with word balloons, speed lines, and other accoutrement necessary "talk" comic. There is a wild full-blown absence of a fourth wall and in fact such a screen between reader and character would murder the premise. 

As part of the conceit other comic strip characters are often featured in the strip, some current, but mostly vintage characters from years and strips gone by. Krazy Kat and Ignatz are frequent guest stars for instance. Other styles are even used such as the time the strip rented space to an adventure comic and the other time when Prince Valiant showed up.  My favorite vintage intruder is the hobo masterpiece Happy Hooligan who keeps trying to slither into the strip and who is usually rebuffed by an intemperate Sam. Eventually he caves in to Happy's relentless efforts. 

Sam is assisted by a nameless large-nosed office mate who gets off some of the best gags of the series. That character wouldn't get a name until years later when the material was retooled into the strip Sam and Silo. Walker and Dumas have a lot of fun in this strip and it shows through. Dumas is often a character and his drawing is the focus of many of the strips. There is also a very specific interest in modern world events and since we're dealing with the early 60's some of the jokes fall flat without some historical knowledge of the era. In the Fantagraphics volume which collects the complete run, there are notes by both Walker and Dumas to assist with some of those references to history as well as some of the more obscure comic strip references as well. 

This is a nifty light read. The cartooning style is open and energetic and Dumas is able to ape the styles of other artists with generally sufficient skill to get the job done. It's an older volume but highly recommended for fair money. 

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