In case you've been frustrated by seeing a bunch of strips that are part of a larger whole that you'll probably never see, here's a taste of a treat you can own yourself.

Fantagraphics will release Sam's Strip by Jerry Dumas (1930-) as a $19.99 208-page compendium (ISBN 1560979720) in mid-December. While there was one previous collection, Sam's Strip Lives! provided only a sampling from the complete 20-month run, so, even if you have that, you'll want to reserve a copy of this with your kindly comics shop now.

Dumas' concept was that his characters were aware they were appearing in a comic strip, and he took the device to the extent that at times the strips took on gentle political commentaries -- since among the other characters were the cartoon devices used by editorial cartoonists. It ran from October 1961 to June 1963 but was never what syndicates would term a "success." The two primary characters, Sam and his assistant, appeared in a revamped version titled Sam and Silo in 1977, but they didn't seem to be aware any longer that they were only two-dimensional occupants of a two-dimensional world.

This is one of my favorite sequences; it appeared in 1962: