Sammy (comics)

Their assignments have them protecting people from all walks of life, from young children to celebrities, fighting gangsters both at home and abroad and even facing elements of fantasy and science-fiction.

Their clients have varied from the average to the bizarre: ordinary people threatened by gangsters, movie stars, eccentric millionaires, mad scientists and even a 200-year-old skeleton back from the dead.

The series has delved on a number of themes ranging from Hollywood to the Ku Klux Klan, the Mafia, espionage and protection rackets,[2] and also more fantastic elements like robots, the undead and the elixir of youth.

Berck wanted to draw adventures featuring gangsters, cops and robbers and it was suggested that he work with Raoul Cauvin, who had shown promise with the writing of the series Les Tuniques Bleues (French for "The Blue Coats").

Sammy was the titular star of both these stories, his boss Jack Attaway assigning him with the job of protecting people from harm and himself getting more involved later on in the plot.

By the third adventure however, Jack, a classic hot-tempered but big-hearted figure, had taken over the strip with Sammy being his right-hand and providing the more common sense side of the operation.

By the publishers' own admission, the series should have been called Jack Attaway et Sammy Day or just Les Gorilles (French for "gorillas", slang term for bodyguard).

The official reason was never given, but the publishers have suggested that the theme of corruption in society was too close to home for the censor's liking — a number of scandals having recently been exposed by the press.

However, copies of the book were acquired in the French-speaking parts of Belgium and Switzerland, taken to France and sold "under the counter" — quite ironic for a story based on Prohibition.

Although an honest man, Jack is on first-name terms with many leading underworld figures, including Al Capone, as well as law-enforcers like Eliot Ness.

He is more cautious than his boss, querying their missions, especially when they fail to get the full details beforehand (which Jack later regrets) but standing by him through thick and thin anyway — though it often means getting little in return in terms of monetary value for either of them and often ending up in hospital or even the insane asylum.