It all began with a dose of friendly
sibling rivalry. Dave
Purcell created a comic about a pair of anthropomorphic animal detectives;
specifically a large dog and a small rabbit. Leaving them around the house, his
brother Steve would
finish the incomplete stories as a parody of themselves. Over time, Steve’s
mocking of the characters eventually grew into his own full stories. In the
1970s, Dave signed over all rights to the characters to Steve on his birthday
and Steve began to develop the characters in his own style.
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| An early Sam & Max strip. |
In the 1980s, Purcell produced Sam & Max comic strips for the
weekly newsletter of California College of Arts
and Crafts. Brought to the attention of Fish Police creator Steven Moncuse, Moncuse
gave Purcell the chance to publish his characters in comic book form. In 1987,
the first Sam & Max: Freelance Police was produced and published by Fishwrap
Productions. The comic, “Monkeys Violating the Heavenly Temple” was Purcell’s
first full story with the characters and it established a lot of the persistent
key elements of the stories and characters.
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| Sam holding Max. |
Sam was a 6 foot dog who wears a
suit and fedora like classic detectives to make people more cooperative when
talking to a large dog. He was generally laid back, but had a warped sense of
justice that made his mission to fight crime a passionate one. He was also a
walking encyclopedia and was always willing to share what he knows in
long-winded sentences--regardless of its accuracy--while also possessing
ignorance to more practical matters.
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| Sam and Max living it up for New Year's. |
Max was described as a “hyperkinetic 3-foot rabbity thing” with white
fur. He always had a crazed grin and verged on psychotic. He enjoyed violence
and had a “pinball-like stream of consciousness” coupled with a short attention
span. Despite the fact that Max was naked, he managed to carry a wide array of
items on his person.
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| Sam & Max from The Adventurer parodying LucasFilm's Indiana Jones franchise. |
Sam & Max continued in comics
through various publishers, such as Comico and Epic. In 1988, Purcell
joined LucasArts as an artist and game
designer and was asked to contribute to LucasArts’ new quarterly newsletter The Adventurer. The newsletter was targeted to customers to
inform them about upcoming LucasArts projects and news. From 1990-96, Purcell
created twelve Sam & Max strips which featured similar plots to the comics
and parodies of LucasArts games and film franchises. Sam & Max were also
used as internal testing material for new SCUMM engine programmers SCUMM
stood for Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion, a LucasArts-developed
scripting language that was created to ease the development of the game Maniac
Mansion and could be reused
across various platforms.
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| Sam & Max Hit the Road artwork. |
Based on the strip’s success in the
newsletter, as well as the success of their previous games Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion, LucasArts offered
Purcell the chance to create a video game around the characters in 1992.
Developed by Purcell with Sean
Clark, Michael
Stemmle and Purcell’s future wife Collette Michaud, Sam & Max Hit the Road
was partially based on Purcell’s 1989 comic “On the Road” and utilized the
SCUMM Engine. It was released for DOS in 1993 as a point-and-click adventure
game. A sequel was planned but soon abandoned.
 |
| Sam model sheet. |
In 1997, FOX
optioned the characters to be created in a new animated series. Produced by Nevlana and developed by Purcell (who also
wrote several of the episodes), the series stayed true to the nature of the
comics while toning some elements down for the targeted children audience. Based
out of a dilapidated building in New York City, Sam (Harvey Atkin) and Max (Robert
Tinkler) received jobs from the unseen Commissioner (Dan Hennessey) via
telephone, which they would always fight over to answer. Their cases ranged from
serving as marriage counselors to the gods to stopping a rat infestation on the
moon. Armed with devices cooked up by their resident tech expert Darla “The
Geek” Gugenheek (Tracey Moore) in the Sub-Basement of Solitude, Sam and Max met
any challenge with a degree of enthusiasm and insanity that always seemed to
work out in their favor. Their primary mode of transportation was a convertible
police car based on the DeSoto Adventurer.
Other writers included J.D.
Smith, Hugh Duffy, Marty Isenberg, Robert N. Skir, Bob Ardiel, Dale Schott, Jamie Tatham, Tim Burns and Tracy Berna, with music by John Tucker.
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| Max facial expression model sheet. |
Except for three episodes, every
episode was comprised of two segments aired out of the intended production
order. Stories typically parodied pop culture from movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Apocalypse Now and
the James Bond series to literature such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Isaac
Asimov’s I, Robot collection. The series was considered a success and even received
the Gemini Award for
“Best Animated Program or Series.” However, a second season was never
commissioned and the show was ended after a single season. Sullivan Entertainment released three
VHS collections containing several story segments each. In 2008, Shout! Factory released the complete
series to DVD. It was also made available to stream on Amazon
Prime Video.
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| The DVD cover. |
Despite its cancellation, Sam & Max went on to become a cult
classic and endured in other media. A collection of all the
Sam & Max comics and strips was
released by Marlowe &
Company in 1995 and again in 1996, before receiving a 20th
anniversary release with new material in 2007 by Telltale. After a failed attempt to bring Sam & Max back to video games in
2001 when developer Infinite Machine
went bankrupt, LucasArts began work on a new game, Freelance Police, in 2002. However, the game was cancelled due
to “economic considerations,” much to the ire of fans. When the LucasArts
license expired in 2005, Purcell took the franchise to Telltale Games, founded like Infinite
Machine by former LucasArts employees, and began work on a series of episodic
point-and-click games beginning in 2006. Max (Dave Boat) also appeared in
Telltale’s Poker Night at the Inventory in 2010 and was joined by Sam (David Nowlin) for its sequel.
From 2005-07, Purcell ran a webcomic for the series on Telltale’s website that
earned him the Eisner
Award for “Best Digital Comic” in 2007. To promote Telltale’s game, GameTap released each episode
of the series weekly on GameTap TV where they remained until GameTap TV was
removed in a site redesign.
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