Sam and Silo

Sam and Silo is a comic strip created by Mort Walker (creator of Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois) and Jerry Dumas. The series first ran as Sam's Strip from 1961 to 1963 and was resurrected as Sam and Silo in 1977. Dumas has been solely responsible for the strip since 1995.

Characters

 * Sam
 * Silo
 * The Mayor
 * The Janitor

Sam's Strip
Sam's Strip appeared from October 1961 to June 1963. It reached a peak circulation of about 60 newspapers, not enough to sustain it.

In Sam's Strip, the title character, Sam, was aware of being the proprietor of the comic strip in which he appeared. The strip relied heavily on metahumor, break-outs into other comic strip universes, appearances by classic comic strip characters, and breaking the fourth wall.

Other comic strips have used metahumor from time to time &mdash; for example, Pogo used objectified speech balloons and on rare occasions the characters could see the artist's signature; Doonesbury characters look at putative fan mail &mdash; but Sam's Strip used it every day. Thus, it held a special interest for comic strip aficionados; but it left the general public nonplussed.

The only other recurring character was Sam's unnamed assistant, who was only given a name in the more conventional gag-a-day comic strip Sam and Silo in 1977, featuring the two characters as a sheriff and deputy, respectively, in a small American town.

Books
One paperback collection, Sam's Strip Lives!, was published in small quantities under the aegis of the Museum of Cartoon Art. Sam's Strip: A Comic about Comics, a collection of the strip's complete original run, was published by Fantagraphics Books in 2009.