Happy New Year From Sam & Max

Sam and Max hope you get your job and house back in 2009! Sky's the limit!

Via Spudvision

Comics So Good They Should Not Be Free: Steve Purcell's Toybox

Steve Purcell, best known as the creator of Sam & Max, is the man. I can't think of any comic writer with a more distinctive voice. His humor is dry and clean, yet anarchic. Like a pitchfork attached to a ceiling fan. As much as I love his work on Sam and Max, I never had the chance to read anything else by him; as far as I knew, there WAS nothing else by him (his Wiki page indeed has few other writing credits, except for a Batman Villains one shot).

But now! Thanks to Steve's art blog, which I should have been following MONTHS ago, fans can revel in the wit and wierdness of Toybox, a genuine 12-page comic starring two decidedly non Salmonax-characters. Well, the duo of Toybox is actually not so different from the Freelance Police; we've still got the combination of one detatched and deadpan character paired with a impulsive and slightly violent pal. The story was published in Fast Forward 3, a sci-fi/fantasy anthology to which Steve was asked to contribute "what you want". Given that prompt, this is one of the stranger things I could imagine a person coming up with.

The whole thing was posted around Halloween; eh, so sue me. Read it, it's upsetting and delightful.

Sam and Max: The Animated Series Has A DVD Release Date

The wonderful thing about this modern age is that any canceled TV show you've ever loved, no matter how obscure, no matter how unpopular, will one day be immortalized on consumer DVD. You just have to wait. March 11th is the day my waiting ends, because that's the DVD release date for Sam and Max: Freelance Police - The Complete Animated Series. Finally, those who blinked and missed the show's less than one year run on Fox Kids will be able to watch and rewatch every episode in all their light-hearted, anarchic, unabashedly violent glory.

The three-disc set will include creator interviews, animated shorts, and plenty of cross-promotion with the new Sam and Max games from Telltale studios. One of the more interesting items promised on the Amazon product page is an "original series bible by Steve Purcell" though I would guess this will consist mainly of the character design charts which have been displayed before in the official Sam and Max sketchbook, A History of S&M (no longer available at Telltale's website, but you can probably find a copy on ebay. It's worth it!).

Of course you can already watch a number of episodes on YouTube, and GameTap has 23 episodes available for download. But the Telltale site says the DVD includes all 26 episodes, and unless that's a misprint, 26 is actually two more episodes than listed on the Wikipedia episode list, so we might even be in "lost episode" territory. I hope, I hope.

Of course not every episode of this series was great, there are almost as many misses as hits, but the moments where the series does nail Purcell's sense of high flying comedic chaos, it does so in a way that makes it's Saturday morning timeslot all the more admirable and/or questionable. I'll close with some of my favorite near-inappropriate lines from the series.

Note how Purcell's arch verbosity was kept in tact, expanding the vocabularies of kids across the nation.

(after getting zapped with a laser gun)
Max: The pain is almost euphoric, Sam.
Sam: Like falling asleep in a tanning booth.

Max: Can this be of any help, Sam? It's my old fully functional HO scale nuclear reactor. Sure gave model railroading a modern touch of urban peril.

The show did a great job of preserving Max's character without watering it down too much. He's much the same lovable yet dangerously insane bunny he was in the comics...

Sam: You kill me, little buddy.
Max: Only if we're taken alive, Sam.

Sam: I'm sure a heaping helping of our persuasive charms will soon have him seeing things our way.
Max: Or not seeing things at all!

Sam: Good work, little buddy. Thanks to your addled shenanigans, I was able to collar this carp without gunfire or loss of life.
Max: Don't mention it, Sam. May I be rewarded with the pleasure of tenderizing - er, I mean "mirandizing" the prisoner now?
Sam: Okay, but do it in the back, these poor folks have seen enough atrocities for one day.

And who could forget the sheer number of grotesque Alligator-Eating-Max's-Arm jokes, from the classic episode, That Darn Gator...

(figuring out how to feed him)
Sam: That's it, Max! He'll only eat things off your finger.
Max: Like the first three layers of skin.

Max: I think I'm experiencing the heady bond that can only come from motherhood....or loss of blood.

Sam: Look at him go, he'll be on to solid foods in no time!
Max: Good. All this arm hair and muscle tissue can't be good for him.

(having fed the alligator everything in the house)
Max: Well, that's the last of it.
Sam: Not quite, there's still some bean-dip.
Max: I mean the sensation in my arm.
(both laugh uproariously)

Geekanerd's past coverage of the Sam and Max renaissance...

Top Ten Comic Book Video Games

GameTrailers has a good countdown of the top ten video games based on comic book licenses. The list brings back some good gaming memories, but I have a few quibbles: First of all, City of Heroes isn't based on a comic book and therefore shouldn't be on the list. It's a superhero game, not a comic book game (much like The Incredibles isn't a comic book movie). Second, and I won't defend this opinion to the death, the TMNT game (which is awesome, no doubt) is based on the cartoon, not the comic, and therefore shouldn't be on the list. Third, Sam & Max isn't on the list and therefore I take back what I said about it being a good list.

But it is a pretty good list.

Sam and Max: Reprints and DVD Releases?!? Have All My Dreams Come True?!

Sam and Max: Surfin' The Highway was the first trade paperback I ever bought, and remains one of my all-time favorite comic books. It's the funniest comic I've ever read, hands down. My old copy has practically disintegrated from constant re-reading, and new copies have been unavailable for years. UNTIL NOW. Almost now - the book is gong back to print, check out the full story on the PWBeat:

THE BEAT: Sam and Max Back to Print!

And that's not all: this second bit of news should probably still be considered a rumor, but a rep from the Shout! Factory production house has stated (via message board) that a DVD BOX SET of the Sam and Max: Freelance Police animated series is in the works. I was a HUGE fan of this series, and a complete DVD set including lost and censored episodes would rank high on my list of reasons life is worth living.

TV Shows On DVD summarizes the message board thread, with links:

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=7479