this developed from Steve merely mocking his brother's work to him creating his own full stories with the characters. Ultimately, in the late 1970s, Dave Purcell gave Steve the rights to the characters, signing them over in a contract on Steve's birthday and allowing him to develop the characters in his own way. In 1980, Purcell began to produce Sam & Max comic strips for the weekly newsletter of the California College of Arts and Crafts. While the visual appearance of the characters had not yet been fully developed, the stories were similar in style to those that followed when Purcell was offered by Fish Police author Steven Moncuse the chance to publish his work properly in 1987. Many aspects of the Sam & Max comics were influenced by Purcell's own experiences. Rats and cockroaches are common throughout the franchise, the former inspired by Purcell's pet rat. In another example, Sam and Max are occasionally shown playing a game called "fizzball", in which the object of the exercise is to hit a can of beer in mid-air with a solid axe handle. Purcell had previously invented the game with his friends, including fellow comic book writers Art Adams and Mike Mignola. Characters Sam Sam is a laid-back but enthusiastic, brown-coated anthropomorphic Irish Wolfhound, described as a "canine shamus". He wears either a gray or blue suit with a matching fedora, to make people more cooperative when conversing with a six-foot talking dog. A warped sense of justice makes Sam the more passionate of the pair for their police work, only held back from taking his job seriously by Max. Nevertheless, he enjoys the mannerisms and dress that come with their line of work. Sam possesses near encyclopedic amounts of knowledge, particularly on obscure topics, and is prone to long-winded sentences filled with elaborate terminology. Although he is always keen to display this information—regardless of its accuracy—Sam can be capable of total ignorance towards more practical matters; for instance, despite his regard for his DeSoto Adventurer, he is severely negligent with the car's maintenance. Sam still retains various doglike qualities: he is excitable, enthusiastic but also susceptible to emotions of embarrassment and guilt. Nevertheless, Sam is "not above sticking his head out the car window and letting his tongue flap in the breeze". Sam rarely loses his temper, and is able to react to panic-inducing situations with extreme calm. When he