#or if it's from another franchise and I'm picturing it as Sam and Max for some reason)

[heloflor]

A few random thoughts/comments after finally reading the Sam and Max comics (Surfin’ the Highway + “The Big Sleep”) :

- I absolutely love how, whenever they’re in town or in an open place, there’s stuff happening in the background. Random details like that don’t really have any purpose in the story but they make the world feel so much more alive !

- I’m really fond of the way Purcell draws Sam for some reason. Idk, his face is just pleasant to look at.

- Max is getting the Pikachu treatment, looking chubby/chonky in the first interpretation of the character only to look thinner later on.

- It’s very interesting to see how the first “official” Sam and Max comic, “Monkeys Violating the Heavenly Temple”, introduces so many moments that became recurring things (“Sam, I mean Max”, Max being the one who needs saving, Max not being into girls, “you crack me up little buddy”, the fight for the phone, Sam’s long-ass “holy-“ lines, Sam being overprotective, Sam finding Max cute etc)

- It’s also interesting to see “Bad Day on the Moon” in comic form and the few differences with the cartoon version.

- I love how everytime they walk to their office door, they check on Flint Paper. Also Max mentioning how Flint probably wasn’t hugged enough 🥺

- I need an entire series of Sam and Max going on a road trip ! Not only can we have small adventures with new environments and characters, there’s also their cute interactions in the car !

- It’s funny to see places and characters you know are going to come back later on in the franchise, like the carnival from “Hit the Road”.

- I kinda like the random intermission in the long comics, though it feels like a random commercial that’s somehow relevant to the comic. Also that page about the board game to play in a car trip with the advice of “if you don’t have dice, just look at the last number of the plaque from the next car that’s coming” is absolutely genius.

- There’s SO MUCH TOUCHING between the two, especially on Sam’s end ! Like, dude can’t keep his hands away from his bunny ! Ok I may be exaggerating here but still ! So much touching ! And between that and other small moments, it makes me low-key question if they were already boyfriends back then 🤔

(I swear “Purcell wanted to create goofy stories with a fun duo but ended up accidentally creating an amazing and healthy gay relationships with pretty good rep overall and ultimately decided to just accept it and roll with it” is my second favorite thing about this franchise)

- Speaking of which, there’s that one moment in the second road-trip comic in which Sam uses Max as a weapon and then immediately asks Max if what he did was alright or if it bothered Max. And I absolutely adore that.

I think it’s due to the fact that, usually, Sam and Max are on the same wavelength and know each other’s boundaries and likes/dislikes. So it’s interesting to “come back to a time” where they still had to understand those boundaries. I also love how asking this is literally the first thing Sam does, showing that there’s really good communication between the two, which could also explain why in later entries they understand each other so well.

(and sure, I know moments like this one happened in other entries of the franchise, like for example Sam in 301 telling Max he's uncomfortable at the idea of Max teleporting alone, but for some reason this panel really stuck with me)

- The office each time having different framed pictures of the duo like in the cartoon 💖

- As someone who loves when anthropomorphic characters behave more like animals, I am so happy that the comics mention Sam smelling stuff a lot and especially Max having good hearing at least once ! Because this is something I really liked to think about, so it’s nice actually getting to see it being mentioned in canon !

Also there’s that one page (I think in “Bad Day on the Moon” ?) where Sam straight-up bites someone and then gets weirded out by his own action. That was fucking amazing.

- Apparently one of Sam’s favorite things during missions is cornering the villain and telling them to freeze with his gun pointed at them. For some reason I really like that fact.

- The comic about the cereal aisle monster has some pretty good action and a cool monster design. Also apparently Max already had weird powers back then with him being able to communicate with the dead.

Also also Max at the end helping a kid while casually talking to Sam was really cute. Fun fact : Max having baby fever and loving kids is my favorite thing about him, especially due to how much it clashes with his usual “wilder” personality (And for those wondering, my favorite thing about Sam is him being protective and going apeshit when Max is in danger).

Also also also it’s pretty funny to see Sam disliking physical contact from the shopkeeper given how touchy he is with Max in those comics.

- There’s a one-page comic about a lady talking about aliens with Sam not buying any of it, and one of the panels is Sam with a glass of water in hand saying “Lady, I’m this close to pouring my drink on you” while looking completely done with this shit. Hands down my favorite comic panel of all the Sam and Max comics.

(Btw, my second-favorite panel is from the first comic, after Max was kidnapped, when Sam is spitting on a portrait of the villain while pointing out how he’s going to destroy him if he took a single hair off of his precious bunny)

- It’s pretty funny how the comics suddenly start having colors at some point out of the blue, like someone randomly gifted Purcell a box of colored pencils. Though, I don’t know what I like most between the black-and-white or the colored comics. On one hand, the colors add to the background. On the other hand, the black-and-white gave a style that’s pretty fitting with the titular characters being detectives/police.

Ultimately, I think I like the black-and-white more, not just because of the style but also because like half of the stories in color are AU stuff (“The Adventurer” comics) while the black-and-white ones are more “grounded” stories.

Yeah, most of the time, I’m not the biggest fan of AUs. I know, pretty surprising for someone whose first fandom was Unde//rtale of all things.

And yes I learned later on that the first comics actually came out in a colored version. That being said I do like the black-and-white version more since, again, it gives them a “detectives” vibe.

- Sam really has a thing for twin popsicles, doesn’t he ?

- Some comics, especially the ones in color, have a few small “mean-spirited” moments between the duo, especially on Sam’s end, and it feels weird to see them like that. Like when one says “shut up” to the other, when Max does something cruel and Sam points it out by actually calling him cruel instead of cute, or when Sam jokingly threatening to hurt Max for being annoying, including the “killing Max and being sent to heaven” comic.

Now I know those jokes also exist in the rest of the franchise, like for example the “I wanna write a reminder to smother you with a pillow in your sleep” from the first Telltale game or the “shut up it’s starting !” from the cartoon, or even some moments in “Hit The Road” like when you rescue Max at the golf game. But for some reason, the ones in the comic stand out more to me.

I think it might be due to the duo dynamic they have and how much more openly affectionate they are in the games and cartoon, making those “I’m going to hurt you” jokes feel insignificant. 🤔

- There’s a comic about Atlantis that opens up with Sam mentioning how he “never dated within my gender” and I don’t know what surprises me the most between Sam unironically saying this, as if open to the idea, or the fact that they used the word “gender” in a comic form the 90s. In any cases, I like it.

(Also I guess this means Sam and Max weren’t together back then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Unless you picture the comics as taking place out of order, which I might do considering that one Christmas comic with the duo living in a house and having a family dinner. Plus this could explain the “mean-spirited” stuff only being in some comics. Also the cereal aisle comic has a guy from the cartoon + Max having powers, so I could see it taking place around the time of the cartoon, after the Telltale games)

- Sam with abs from that one biker comic is cursed. Chubby Sam with “uncool 40 years-old dad” energy is best Sam.

- And from that same comic, Max gets a tattoo on his right arm. Headcanon that he still has it but it’s hidden under his fur, hence why it’s never visible.

- I love how “The Adventurer Comics”, “The Big Sleep” and the first page of the unfinished comic are just casually available to read on the official Sam and Max website.

- “The Big Sleep” was apparently written around the time of “Save The World”, and I feel like you can kinda see it from the way Max looks in this comic. They removed the chonk in favor of a rounder stomach that resembles his 3D model.

Also I really like how this comic has Sam in danger and Max trying to save him, with Max’s last line of the comic showing some protectiveness. Given how rare it can be at times, I like when they switch around which one needs saving.

Also also this comic has Max calling some guy gay and later on almost saying “piece of shit”. I love it.

Also also also, there’s a cameo of granny Ruth as part of Sam’s memories !!! (along with a picture of Max because of course 💖)

Last thing, since earlier I mentioned the “mean-spirited” moments : this one shows my point by having Sam mentioning bashing Max in the head to help him calm down, with Max reacting by saying “aww, you spoil me !” This is the kind of instance where a joke is actually not mean-spirited because there’s something immediately afterwards showing that Max is enjoying the thought, while in the older comics, it’s just Sam mentioning hurting Max without Max commenting on it, which gives off this “mean-spirited” side.

- There are at least two comics that I’m missing, or at least two that I’m assuming are official. Given how the franchise started with Purcell drawing after his brother’s stories, I’m pretty sure there’s a lot out there that was never published (for those asking, yes I stumbled across some of the earliest versions of those characters from back when Purcell was messing with his brother’s work).

But yeah, from what I know, one of the missing two has a page with Sam and Max pushing n*zis off a cliff, and the second one has a joke about Sam asking Max to remove what he’s wearing and Max refusing, with I think some kind of stereotypical tribe behind them ?

- Thinking about it, I’ve seen people talk about how trigger-happy Sam and Max are in the comics compared to the rest of the franchise, with them being toned down due to age rating. But tbh, I didn’t find them that trigger-happy in the comics, at least not more than the games. They felt pretty on-par with how they act in “Hit The Road” specifically. Might be just me tho 🤔

- Overall, I’d say my favorite comic is “The Big Sleep” due to the whole “Max saving Sam” situation. But more than that, I especially adore how evident it is that Max absolutely loves Sam without outright saying it. It’s shown very well with how worried Max gets, the fact that he greatly compliments the doctor at some point or even the way he decides by himself to investigate the phone because he feels uneasy about the bug and wants to find out what happened to Sam.

This comic aside, the road trip trilogy is a close second and I especially enjoy the moments with the duo in the car, like Sam telling Max a creepy story or them sleeping while still having the car on, etc. I’d probably put the very first official comic as third, mostly for how many recurring things this comic sets up + the usual “Sam saving Max” being nice to see. And the unfinished “Max getting shot” comic would be fourth, because angst is my jam.