For those failing to keep track on their own, the second page of Steve Purcell’s Sam & Max webcomic has gone up.

Also a bonus holiday message may be appearing in the near future.

Big news! The first page of Steve Purcell’s syndicated Sam & Max comic has appeared on Telltale Games’ website! The comic is titled “The Big Sleep” (based on nothing, apparently), and is interactive, like Graham Annable’s “Dank the Caveman Inventor” comics… In other words, if the panels look sparse to you, don’t forget to use your mouse cursor and roll over everything!

As for how frequent the comic will be, who knows? Our top secret source on their web development team had no idea, so you’ll just have to obsessively refresh the site once a day for the next month until the second page goes up!

Telltale is also selling a brand new Sam & Max tshirt, the first new Sam & Max merchandise available since Purcell printed up some shirts for Comic-Con sometime around 2002, or maybe ‘01. The poster prints previously available at Tantrum Entertainment (now listed there as “out of stock”) are now for sale through Telltale’s as well.

Telltale’s News!

GameCloud has put up a new interview with Steve Purcell covering Telltale’s upcoming new Sam & Max adventure game, some predictable ground, and also some new stuff.

For instance, Purcell talks about his involvement with the game (he’ll help sketch out some story ideas, “offer some character designs and dialog and mostly a lot of bothersome opinions about everything”), LucasArts and Infinite Machine’s old failed attempts to make Sam & Max games (Infinite Machine’s was based on a story called Sam & Max Plunge Through Space in which the Freelance Police go on an intergalactic hunt for the Statue of Liberty, which was stolen), and the inevitable “when will Pixar make a Sam & Max movie” question (”Pixar is doing fine without Sam & Max”).

So check it out over at Gamecloud, even though I’ve just spoiled the good bits.

Almost two months after their initial sneak preview, Telltale Games has formally announced their Sam & Max adventure game project. Though they’re still keeping pretty tight lipped, they have put up a boldly designed (and quite nice looking) Sam & Max mini-site

What’s the history of the Telltale team with Steve Purcell?

Much of the team from LucasArts’ Sam & Max Freelance Police are now at Telltale. Telltale CEO Dan Connors had been the producer for Freelance Police, CTO Kevin Bruner had been the programming lead and Creative Director Graham Annable had been the lead animator. Ties between Telltale staffers and Steve go way back to the time when Steve worked in the Art Department at LucasArts. Dan was involved with LucasArts’ Sam and Max Hit the Road and Steve even taught Dan how to spearfish and smoke cherry cigars on Lake Ewok when Dan was just a snotty-nosed little punk.

Also present in the announcement is some concrete news about when we’ll next see Sam & Max appear in comic form. In a question appropriately titled, “Is Steve ever going to do any more Sam & Max comics? What the hell is his problem?” it’s revealed that Purcell is working on a serialized Sam & Max adventure which will be released as a series of webcomics on Telltale’s Sam & Max page, as well as Sam & Max.com (the upcoming official site, not the one you’re reading now).

Will it be the long-lost “Max is shot in the ear and replaced by a crazy monkey” story that’s been sitting on a shelf in Purcell’s house for the last decade, or something new? Time will tell, but odds are it’s not the monkey story.

Telltale promises sporadic updates to their Sam & Max site in the coming months, with more formal news sometime in early 2006.

Updated content and various fixes to the site are coming soon, probably. Yes, because of what was reported in the previous post.

Well, that’s all.

Ha ha, yes! The emotional roller coaster that is Sam & Max sequel news is headed up yet another hill, care of an announcement made tonight by Telltale Games that they have secured the rights to develop a game based on the freelance police.

This is the third attempt to make a followup to 1993’s Sam & Max Hit the Road, the first one being an Xbox-bound action/adventure title from now-defunct game studio Infinite Machine, and the second of course being LucasArts’ ill-fated attempt at a sequel, Sam & Max Freelance Police. Both of those died before having a chance to live, but here’s hoping third time’s the charm! Telltale certainly has experience with the characters, as the studio was largely formed from members of the Sam & Max Freelance Police team, who left LucasArts shortly after their game was canned.

The sequel announcement was made at a press event held earlier this evening in San Francisco. The event was aimed mostly at potential investors, discussing Telltale’s unique business model and position in the industry, so the Telltale guys and Steve Purcell (who was in attendance) had little to say specifically about the new Sam & Max game other than the fact that it will exist, but that didn’t do much to dampen the excitement.

What I do know is that the game is not a continuation of the cancelled “Sam & Max: Freelance Police” sequel that the Telltale team was working on while at LucasArts - this Telltale Sam & Max game is all new, started from scratch. Whether or not we’ll see a few familiar locations and characters from what little was released from Freelance Police, though, is yet to be seen. Telltale’s Sam & Max game will be released in episodic form, downloadable from their site and other games portals (similar to the approach they’re taking with Bone).

To answer a couple other questions up front: Whether or not Mike Stemmle is involved (and what level he is involved if he is involved at all) is not known as far as I can tell, and I forgot to ask whether or not the same voice actors from Sam & Max Hit the Road will be involved.

Official word from Telltale, hopefully including some juicy details, will be appearing in a week or two. Their first installment of their other adventure game, a promising title based on Jeff Smith’s popular comic series Bone, is hitting the net in the next couple of days and Telltale wants to focus on that before letting loose the 6 foot canine and 3 foot rabbity thing.

About 50 thousand people have written or otherwise harassed me about this news, so it’s sort of suspicious that it’s taken me so long to get it posted. Sorry about that.

A week ago, the gaming site Gamasutra ran an interview with Steve Purcell, in a feature titled “Playing Catch-Up: Steve Purcell.” The article is a great read, as it touches on what led Purcell into the games industry in the first place, his time at LucasArts, what he’s been up to the last few years, and of course the oft-mourned Sam & Max Freelance Police game.

The part of the story that made everyone’s head and/or genetalia explode, though, was a bit at the very end in which Purcell answers a question about “getting back into games,” which went like this:

Finally, Steve concludes his comments with equivocation about whether his involvement in the game industry is completely behind him:”Would I get back into games? Sure. The [Sam & Max] license is back in in my hands now so we’ll see what happens in the near future.”

Of course, he immediately qualifies that with, “In the meantime, when I’m not working at Pixar, I’m exploring other bizarre concepts, doing some painting, and cobbling together material for my website which will be called Spudvision.com,” so I wouldn’t start obsessively refreshing certain websites of known ex-Sam & Maxers quite yet, but it’s still very promising news to hear.

Thanks to Pollo, Master Jodi, Lutzifer, Michael, Donovan, Sean, Marek, Spaff, and Jason for writing or harassing me about this. Clearly you are all hardcore.

Thanks to the persistent digging and online harvesting of the Unofficial Sam & Max forumites, a couple of previously unseen animation clips from Sam & Max Freelance Police have been discovered.

On the portfolio site for animator Joe White, if you visit the animation page, you can check out a great clip of Max shaving his butt in the office paper shredder, some walking animations, and a clip of Sam and Max busting out some moves in a dance-a-thon.

The rest of Joe White’s site is also pretty cool and worth checking out.

About two months ago (yes, I’m a failure), Steve Purcell wrote in to let me know that a short comic story written by him and drawn by Mike Mignola and Kevin Nowlan appeared in the book “Batman Villains Secret Files & Origins 2005.” The story they contributed tells a campy version of the origin of the character Clayface. According to Purcell, “it was done many years ago and then canned by the Batman editor at the time who thought it was disrespectful to the characters.”

If you can’t find it in your local comic shop, you might want to check online. For instance, I found it here. You may find it elsewhere.

A few people (like jp-30 over at Mixnmojo) have noticed that Spudvision.com now points to a half-finished “Official Steve Purcell Website,” featuring non-functioning links to a Sam & Max section, Portfolio and Bio sections, a links page, and a store. Purcell also currently owns Samandmax.com, but that too is empty. If you’re really looking for something to do, keep your eyes on those two sites, something might appear there eventually.