Book: Sam & Max Surfin' the Highway

Now this blog isn't exclusively for video games, it's about all kinda of media so next I would like to tell you about Sam & Max: Surfin' the highway...

Sam & Max are a creation of artist Sam Purcell from the late 1980s, however in a medium filled with self appointed do-gooders, Sam & Max aren't any ordinary vigilanties. Sam is an anthropromorphic dog who wears an ill-fitting suit and fedora while Max is a hyperkinetic rabbity thing who often refers to himself as a lagomorph despite his toothy shark-like grin. Since their creation, Sam & Max have appeared in award winning comics, video games & a televisions series and have maintained a cult following throughout all these years. Surfin' the Highway is then a collection of their comic book adventures which had been out of print for many years but was recently given a reissue by Telltale Games who currently also produce the new episodic Sam & Max point and click adventure game series.

The anthology of Sam & Max comics chronicle their many adventures which take through the comfort of their 1960 DeSoto to around the world, to the moon and even through time. They like to use viiolent tactics whenever possible and in spite of devoting themselves to enforcing the law, seem to only have a vague understanding of how often they themselves break it. The humour in Sam & Max (if you can't tell already) is pretty irreverant. For example, when on the Moon, Sam & Max hitchhike and get picked up by two people dressed as a gorilla and a zebra driving a moon buggy but the only problem Sam has with this is that gorillas and zebras don't normally intermingle in nature. This kind of humour can also be found in the other mediums which Sam & Max have appeared. The original Sam & Max PC game included instructions on how to make your own Max paper-bag puppet in the instruction manual. Sam & Max are just chalked full of silly little things like that.

The art in Sam & Max is also very nice. Most of it is in black & white which is fine within the context of the series being a little film-noir-esque. Steve Purcell makes good use of shadow and texture to give Sam & Max's world a sense of real gritty detail. There are also some stories which are inked in colour which is also well done by Mr. Purcell, who made interesting choices such as the sky often being pink or orange regardless of the time of day. The character models are characters but retain a nice balance between real and cartoony and the backgrounds are also well detailed even if Mr. Purcell admits he had no source for drawing Thailand so it's completely wrong - hilarious.

For many years this collection was difficult and expensive to find. But thanks to Telltale Games, it's available again through their website with the addition of bonus stories and material. It's available in paperback or hardcover for a very reasonable price (especially considering how much copies of this book cost at this time last year). If you're a fan of independant comics, irreverant humour or wild adventurous stories, then head over to their website and get a copy for yourself while you still can.