Character And Slapstick

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

When I was at Mort Walker's place I talked with his assistant Bill Janocha about Jerry Dumas. Dumas joined the Walker crew in the midfifties. I think I can pinpoint where he arrives, actually. Around that time, the Beetle Bailey gags change from gag-oriented to character-oriented. Now I am not saying that Dumas was the one that introduced character to Mort Walker's strips. But I do think there was something to their collaboration, to the effect of talking about what he was making that put the already brilliant cartoonist on the path of what made all of his strips so great and such a big success - the mixture of characterdriven jokes and slapstick. Jerry Dumas stayed with the team until his death last year, working on all the strips. In the early sixties he created Sam's strip together with Mort - a rightfully completely reprinted strip (even though it only ran for a short time) about two characters who knew they were in a comic strip. If you don't know it, you should check it out. Dumas drew the strip himself, in a style that was similar to Mort's but a bit lighter. In the seventies Dumas was allowed to repurpose those characters as a sheriff and his deputy in a small town under the name Sam and Silo. Not as out and out funny as the strips he did with Mort Walker, but still very enjoyable. I was lucky enough to come across a huge run af them.