Sam and Fuzzy Q & A: Fools Edition
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"In comic 1833 Malcolm seems to have a version of inside information about Brain and Hart's species... and healways seems to be presenting his warped understanding of truths that everyone else only finds out much later... So, care to comment on the last panel of comic 1760?" -Shawn
Ah, so you want to know if Sam-with-ears really is the evil twin of the real Sam, eh?
During the Noosehead era, Malcolm's crazy conspiracy theories often proved to be unexpectedly accurate. Sadly, this wasn't because of any particular insight or clairvoyance on Malcolm's part... it was because his head was picking up radio signals from the Sin Tower surveillance systems! Without that aid, the accuracy of Malcolm's speculation has taken a pretty big hit. (It's kind of tragic, when you think about it.)
"Recently, you've been going back and showing a lot of the events of the pre-Noosehead series from different perspectives, and revealing a lot more about what was going on. The Noosehead arc seems like the point when you started bringing your developed universe into the story itself (rather than making primarily non sequitur stripes about an average guy living in the real world except for his talking bear) and it seems like you're trying, pretty successfully, to retcon the earlier material to 'bring it in line' with current canon. Is that true or has this really been planned out from the beginning?" -Weezact7
That's a good way of looking at it! Although a lot of the stories in the Classic Era were planned ahead -- particularly in its later half of it -- most of what we now consider the "Sam and Fuzzy universe" itself still had not really been developed. At that point, I wasn't thinking much about what was going in the world beyond the city of Newport. It's only in the Noosehead era and beyond that bigger concepts -- like the Underground, the Committee, and the surface status quo -- are introduced.
It's been fun to go back to the Classic era and show how some of these events and organizations must have fit into the bigger S&F world that we now know exists. I certainly can't claim it was all planned at the time! But as I've grown and expanded S&F over the years, I've always tried to keep those early Classic strips in mind, and take care to ensure they fit into the bigger world I've slowly built around them. (With as little retconning as possible!)
"Any big plans for April Fools Day this year? It's been a while since you've done a Fools Day joke!" -Amy
Every year I tell myself I'm going to come up with something fun, and every year I wind up bailing! In late March I'm usually busy building up a comic buffer in prep for the incoming con season... and April Fool's Day gags always wind up on the backburner. Alas! Maybe next time?
A new comic arrives on Monday! See you then, friends.
-Sam Logan
