Sam’s Strip (comic strip)

(1961-1963)
by Mort Walker and Jerry Dumas
Wikipedia Entry

Sam’s Strip was a comic book that was ahead of its time – and possibly too far behind it.

It was the brainchild of Mort Walker and Jerry Dumas. The two worked together on Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois in the fifties and both were avid comic strip fans and historians. The idea came to them to write a strip about comics, where the characters interacted with both the greats and the conventions of the genre.  The result was Sam’s Strip.

Sam had a round body, a cartoon nose, and a mouth hidden under the collar of this shirt.  He was joined by a unnamed assistant, and most of the strip talked about the difficulties of running a comic
strip. Sam would go to the comic strip prop closet to bring out some standard comic book devices, like a picture of a saw in a log when he wanted to sleep or exclamation points to hang in the air.  Jerry Dumas would occasionally appear or be referred to. Old-time comic book characters would show up and Sam would talk about the difficulties of getting help or good gags.

There was also a mild political element. Sam would comment on political figures, and editorial cartoon elements (like the weary world pioneered by Herblock) but the strip never took any strong stances a la Pogo.

Walker and Dumas came up with the gags, while Dumas did the art. Walker also did the lettering.

The strip was never very popular. Sam broke the fourth wall in just about every strip, something audiences were not used to. Also, Dumas concentrated on using old-time cartoon characters like Happy Hooligan, who the audience didn’t recognize. It wasn’t necessary to do so, but it may have confused readers.*

The strip folded after less than two years.

But Dumas loved the characters, so in 1977 he repurposed them with Sam and Silo, where Sam’s assistant now had a name. They were small-town police and the strip ran many years.

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*This was also a lot of work for Dumas. Copiers were rare, so he had to draw each character individually, matching the original artist’s style.  A monumental task.