Sam and Fuzzy Q & A: Samms Edition
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"Did you always know Sam’s true surname or was this a more recent invention for this plot line/gag?" -Chris
I've known for a long time... but I didn't ALWAYS know, that's for sure.
None of the characters from Sam and Fuzzy's humble gag-strip origins tended to have last names... I didn't really start writing plots that required them until the Noosehead era.
By the time we got to Fix Your Problem, Sam's conspicuously unmentioned last name started to get awkward. He was running a business, and no one could ever call him "Mr. ______"! At the same time, it felt weird to just throw it in non-chalantly after never mentioning it for so long.
So I decided Sam must deliberately avoided telling people his name because it embarasses him! "Sam Samms" is what I came up with. Since then, I've just been waiting for the right place to reveal it. The rise and fall of Sam's fake "Schaus" identity wound up being the right place, and you can see a little bit of jokey tip-toeing around his original last name here, when the name was being set up.
"You've mentioned in the past that committee member Trella's horns are actually Homestuck cosplay. With that in mind, I think I speak for all of us in asking: What's her fan troll's name? I mean, "Trella" isn't long enough to be a troll name, and she's not dressed like any canon Homestuck character, so she must be cosplaying her own fan character, right?" -Josh
Aha! Well, Trella is actually her real name. And I don't think the "regular" outfit we see her in isn't meant to be any sort of complete troll cosplay. The way I generally think of it is that Trella cosplays in her free time, but on one occassion, she forgot to remove her candy-corn horns before going to a meeting. She didn't want to admit it was a mistake, and has been wearing them to meetings ever since. It's a power move!
I'm not sure which character she was cosplaying as originally. Man, there's still so much deep and important Sam and Fuzzy lore to explore, isn't there?
"I was randomly searching Google for images of Sam & Fuzzy book covers and came across this:
This beautiful monstrosity is apparently Fix Your Problem: Blind Ferret Edition, and as you can probably see, it has a very different appearance than Fix Your Problem usually does. So I guess my question is: aside from the cover art, what else is different about this thing, will my Sam & Fuzzy collection (and life) ever be complete without one, and is Mr. Sin the reason those ferrets are blind?" -Dawson
That, my friend, is a special printing of Fix Your Problem that was sent out last year to Comic Bento subscribers! Comic Bento is a monthly mystery loot crate for graphic novels. I worked with Blind Ferret (the publisher) to do a special print run of the book so that it could be included. My theory was it would be a good way to hook a bunch of new readers. (And it was, so yay!)
Since we were doing a separate print run anyway, I thought it would be fun to whip up a new cover. But aside from the cover, table of contents page, and advertisement in the back, the contents of the book are exactly the same as the "regular" version.
After sending copies out to Bento subscribers, Blind Ferret had some extras from their print run left over. I've got them all now, and they're the copies that I've been taking with me to conventions for the last year or so. So if you've seen me at a con recently, you've probably seen this cover before!
That's a wrap for this week, team. And it's also a wrap for the "Unfixable" storyline. Happy Friday the 13th! See you on Monday with our next comic.
-Sam Logan
