The Collected Sam and Max: Surfin' the Highway by Steve Purcell

The Collected Sam and Max is a touching Holocaust narrative in which Purcell depicts the Jews as Sam the dog, and the Germans as a rabbit-esque creature named Max. Just kidding. It’s about a vigilante animal duo who excel at violence and friendship.

This pair of anthropomorphic “freelance police” have been running amok in our culture for twenty-five years now, hijacking a slew of different media formats for the enjoyment of mankind. Many fans were first introduced to the twosome by way of LucasArts’ 1993 point-and-click PC game, Sam and Max Hit the Road, which is widely considered one of the greatest things to come out of the golden age of interactive adventure. Four years later they earned an even bigger following by starring in their own Saturday morning cartoon. But anyone wishing to experience the essence of Sam and Max must look to their comic book roots because their early appearances are pure Purcell -- Steve that is, and thanks to the magic of independent publishing he had total creative freedom.

Readers of this edition will find that the events are a bit less cohesive than say, the Watchmen series. This collection of stories not only comes from different issues, it also spans five different publishers, not counting a dozen strips that were created for the LucasArts newsletter.

Regardless of the sponsor, every tale finds Sam and Max roaming through a surreal world where enemies lurk at every turn: muggers in the alleys, terrorists in the skies, and an angry volcano god in the volcano. Even their office telephone is demon-possessed. Fortunately, dealing with constant adversity is a sport for Sam and Max. Their bouts with bad guys are casual yet vicious, offering readers the same sort of satisfaction that can be gleaned from a Death Wish film. Their take on justice may overreach sometimes, but Purcell summed it up in a recent interview, “The moral ambiguousness is [...] a spoof on heroism derived from overzealous violence.” So there.

While guns, teeth, and claws are their solution to baddies, Sam and Max rely on camaraderie and humor to deal with the chaos they live in. The dialogue is brilliantly written and laugh-out-loud-able, and their relationship is surprisingly touching. Purcell says people are lucky in life if they can find this sort of friendship in which “You share a unique set of inside jokes and phrases and can endlessly amuse each other.”

The writing and the visuals work together seamlessly because Purcell is both writer and illustrator, and he develops the jokes and the art at the same time. The artwork is gorgeous. Close-lookers are rewarded with hilarious details that rival the gutters of Mad Magazine. Purcell also has a masterful grasp on the aesthetics of fun, seasoning his stories with stuff like breakfast cereals, tourist traps, Bigfoot, Christmas morning, oversized Mardi Gras heads, and an unforgettable homage to Stuckey’s roadside convenience stores.

Now that I’ve written all this, I see that Amazon is showing the book to be out of print and not exactly cheap. (The same goes for the more handsome anniversary edition.) It wasn’t my intent to taunt the Internet with something that’s not easily accessible, although the high secondary market value supports my point that The Collected Sam and Max is truly awesome.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon

A smiling Amazon box arrived on the porch just in time for me to pack my new paperback copy of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay in my carry-on bag. As my ride to the 2008 San Diego Comic Con approached cruising altitude I opened the book that my wife recommend, and settled into a rare streak of four uninterrupted hours.

The tale begins at a comic book convention where Sam Clay speaks to fans in a panel discussion much like the ones I would soon be standing in line for. Sam is co-creator of the Escapist, a character whose popularity rivals Superman in Chabon’s alternate reality. The other half of the creative team is Sam’s cousin, Josef “Joe” Kavalier. The duo met in 1939 when they were teenagers, just days after Joe had escaped Nazi-occupied Prague and moved into Sam and his mother’s Brooklyn apartment.

In those days, Sam’s career was off to a slow start at Empire Novelties, a mail-order company where his duties sometimes entailed ad paste-ups and product illustrations for things like pocket cameras and midget radios. Again, I delighted in the way this paralleled my own life. At the time, I was the sole freelance graphic artist for the century-old S.S. Adams company, the outfit that pioneered the American prank and magic trick industry.

Sam, hoping to score a job for his cousin, asked him, “Can you draw the sound of a fart?” I perked up at the familiarity of this challenge. I’d been there myself, questioning the proper ratio of gas clouds, and the optimal number of stink waves. Josef’s solution: five horizontal lines sprinkled with stars and curlicues and broken musical notation. Absolutely beautiful.

While my role in the novelty biz was the miraculous manifestation of a childhood dream, Sam and Joe were eager to make the leap into the superhero game. “Big money” was Sammy’s goal whereas Josef was looking for a means to rescue his family from Hitler. Their creative process from concept to business plan to pitch meeting was a joy to listen in on. Their hero-making efforts turn out to be wildly successful, primarily because they understood that a character’s origin and motivation is more important than his costume and super powers.

This principle applies to the thrilling origin story of Josef himself, who possesses all the qualities of a great superhero. Not unlike heavyweights such as Batman and Spider-Man, Joe is driven by tragic family circumstances, and has an arsenal of powers which include sleight of hand, lock-picking, stealth, incredible courage,and the ability to draw perfect flatulence.

Between chapters I paused to stare at clouds through the rectangular window, and wallow in the affection I was feeling for the story. No doubt, my own travel-based excitement was tangled with my opinion, but this type of subject matter is not often handled by such capable hands and executed with such beauty, and attention to detail.

By the time my plane landed in California, Sam and Josef’s career was just taking off. I had yet to encounter the matters of love, failure, isolation, and family that ushered the book into Pulitzerland. But those first four hours perfectly matched the enthusiasm, hope, and sense of possibility that is often present when one begins an epic adventure, or embarks on a week at Comic Con.

Buy The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay on Amazon

Mind Blowing Movies: Poltergeist (1982), by Kirk Demarais

[Video Link] It's a shame that movie laughs and thrills don't have the staying power that terror has. It makes sense though, laughter and excitement aren't as crucial to survival as fear-based cinematic life lessons such as: never sleep with a clown at the foot of your bed.

As enticing as the trailer was, I never even considered asking my folks to let me watch Poltergeist (1982). The closest thing to a horror flick that I'd seen was The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966) starring Don Knotts, a film that firmly stamped my brain with an image of garden shears stuck in the neck of a lady's portrait that leaked real blood.

"Coming up next...Poltergeist." announced my friend Eric's television set. His TV wasn't like mine, it had a new, plastic box on top that unlocked a pricey service called Home Box Office. After the metallic HBO soared through space I found myself watching the opening credits. A rush of guilt prompted me to run to the kitchen phone where I called my mom. Back then I'd rather ask for permission than forgiveness.

I briefly stated my case, which concluded with, "It's rated PG so it can't be that bad." Unbelievably, she allowed me to proceed. It really is rated PG, I know because I double checked the TV guide right after I watched a man peel off his own face. But the gore alone wasn't the mind blower, what eventually got to me was the relatability of it all.

The specters weren't picking on lustful teenagers or Don Knotts, they were terrorizing a normal American family, specifically the kids! The on-screen details confirmed that this could happen to me. The victims were consumers of Chee-Tos, Pizza Hut, and Star Wars action figures, all things that would have charted on my personal list of life's little joys. I too had a younger, blonde, pajama-wearing sister, but not only that, my sister had the very same wicker headboard that Carol Anne clings to as the evil spirits attempt to suck her into the closet. The ghosts might as well have been haunting my house.

This realism was so convincing that for months my brain conducted nightly mental drills in an effort to prepare me for living tree attacks, and tumbles into corpse-filled swimming pools. When my parents stopped letting me invade their bed, I slept with the overhead light on. Eventually I was able to shake the paranoia by simply embracing the fact that ghosts aren't real. That was right about the time I saw The Day After, the made-for-TV movie that first introduced me to the concept of nuclear warfare. How I long for my ghost-fearing days.