You Mean We Can Use Characters From Other Comic Strips?

About a year ago, ILT ran a few examples of Sam's Strip, a newspaper comic strip that knew it was a newspaper comic strip. Created by Mort Walker and Jerry Dumas, Sam's Strip was syndicated by King Features, which was worried from the outset that Sam's Strip was too esoteric, featured too many in-jokes, and that no one would recognize the old comic characters that made 'guest appearances.'

But it was brilliant. Some enterprising publisher (are you listening, Fantagraphics and Dark Horse?) should reprint the entire run.

Want more proof? Click to enlarge.

Sam's Strip Was Meta

Meta has been defined as "a prefix meaning a later, more comprehensive, transcending, or more highly organized version of something. Used with the name of a discipline to designate a new but related discipline designed to deal critically with the original one."

There was a meta-comic strip in 1961 - Sam's Strip, the comic strip that knew it was a comic strip. It never became popular, never appeared in more than 60 newspapers, lasted two years, and "confounded many readers." It was clever, though, and ahead of its time. Five examples of Sam's Strip by Mort Walker and Jerry Dumas: