Sam

From Candypedia
Sam
GenderMale
SpeciesCat
BreedKhao Manee
Family
OccupationStudent
AffiliationCollege
ResidenceLucy’s house
DebutPillow Talk, page 42
April 11, 2011 (2011-04-11)

Sam is Lucy’s older brother, the eldest of the three Khao Manee siblings from Lucy’s house. He studies at Ivyshire out of state and is usually home only for visits. He is a scowling, studious homebody who had little social life as a teenager, and he has spent years making sure no boy gets within arm’s reach of his sister. When he first showed up, readers took him for Lucy’s father, which tells you about all you need to know about how he carries himself.

Personality

Sam runs on two settings, a scowl and a slightly deeper scowl, and he points both of them at any boy standing near Lucy. He was the kid who stayed in and studied while everyone else was out making friends. It paid off handsomely, since he ended up at Ivyshire, and his family has been comparing the younger two against him ever since. His siblings talk about him the way you talk about a strict uncle. Lucy mocks him freely, while Jordan admits that he misses him. The glare is not the whole story, though. When something goes genuinely wrong, Sam is the one who comes home, puts a hand on his mother’s shoulder, and says the steadying thing without being asked.

Snow is no excuse for Mike to escape Sam’s supervision.

Where his sister is concerned, Sam has been on guard duty since she was in elementary school. Back when he collected her from Roseville Elementary School, out came what she still calls the “death glare”, and he would step between Lucy and Mike before steering her away.[1] A few years later he hoisted Mike out of a snowbank by the scruff for kneeling over her, and then wanted to know why the two of them were being left alone upstairs.[2][3] Jordan sums him up as a total cock block whenever Lucy brought boys around,[4] and the instinct survives into his college years. The first words out of his mouth on meeting Augustus are a demand to know who the creep is.[5]

Sam does not save his glares for the boys, either. Veronica’s commentary introduces him as a cranky, antisocial, cynical bookworm,[3] and his family agrees with every word. According to Lucy he hated everyone, not just Mike,[1] and she once described him as reproducing asexually and feeding on his own hatred like a “big ol’ BITCHY sunflower”.[6] Romance has never seemed high on his list. His mother recalls that girls were the last thing on his mind as a teenager,[7] and Veronica has said she sees him as “pretty ace” and cannot imagine him with anyone, adding elsewhere that he would not entertain Rachel for a second.[8][9]

Sam is also the family’s academic gold standard, which is a heavier thing to be than it sounds. He got into Ivyshire, an out-of-state school Veronica describes as the Harvard of the setting,[10][11] and his mother starts to boast that he “didn’t get a single rejecti--” just as Jordan is holding a very thin envelope.[12] Carol tells the younger two they could learn a few things from Sammy,[6] and the younger two resent being measured against someone who, as Lucy points out, never needed rules because he never had a social life to restrict.[10] The comparison cuts deepest in Unpacking Day, a chapter found only in the sixth print volume. Lucy asks why nobody ever gave Sam grief for having no friends, and her mother answers that Sam never ended up in a psych ward.[13]

At the hospital, Sam stays close to his mother.

For all that, Sam is the one you want in the room when things fall apart. He hugs his mother as soon as he walks in the door,[14] steadies her when she agonises over a decision about Lucy,[15] and stands behind her at the hospital counter with a hand on her shoulder.[16] Veronica notes that he is willing to skip a class or two to come see that his sister is okay, and that if things change at home he will drop what he is doing.[11] Even his mother’s praise of him, for all the trouble it causes, comes down to the fact that he focused on his studies and took good care of his brother and sister.[6]

Appearance

Sam is a white cat with one blue eye and one yellow eye, a pair of glasses, and a fringe of bangs.[2] He and his family are Khao Manee, a breed Veronica picked partly because it so commonly has odd-coloured eyes, and she has said that is exactly why Lucy’s brothers have them.[17][18] It was not always so. In the original version of the story Sam, Jordan and their father all had blue eyes like Lucy. Veronica added the heterochromia once she decided it would be a bit odd for the whole family to share one eye colour.[19]

He is strong enough to lift a seventh-grader clean off the ground by the scruff with one hand.[2] In the childhood flashbacks he wears a t-shirt, shorts and sneakers with his hands jammed in his pockets, and as a teenager a striped button-down.[1] By his college years he turns up to the family New Year’s party with a wine glass in hand.[20] Across his appearances, he is usually drawn with the same unimpressed expression. Veronica calls it “resting bitch face syndrome”, and it is the main thing separating him from Felix, whom she otherwise considers a pretty similar character.[21]

Significant events

Sam’s earliest appearances are memories. A sepia flashback in Dinner Time shows him as a boy collecting Lucy from Roseville Elementary School and steering her away from Mike with a glare.[1] Lucy’s own flashback in Pillow Talk finds him when she and Mike are in seventh grade, hauling Mike out of a snowbank and offering to drive him home before a snowstorm.[2][22] By the time the comic’s present catches up with him, he has already been accepted to Ivyshire and moved out of the house.[10][4] Dinner Time itself is mostly the rest of the family talking about him over dinner, with Lucy and Jordan roasting him and their mother holding him up as the model child.[6]

Sam’s approval comes across as a warning in Love Again.

He comes home for New Year’s Eve in Ten Seconds to Midnight, walking in mid-conversation to agree that Lucy is the one who needs help right now.[14] On the couch he backs his mother’s plan for a big step in Lucy’s life, one Veronica later confirmed was her transfer to another school.[15][23] Lucy, however, has been standing on the stairs listening the whole time.[24] Weeks later, after Lucy’s suicide attempt, he is at the Hospital behind his mother in Breaking Up; a later grief montage in Leaving Home shows him beside her again as she weeps.[16][25]

The BCI story Open Fire gives Sam his longest stretch of page time. On Harvey’s annual boys’ camping trip with Jordan and Matt, he says that he is studying mechanical engineering, hates cars, and wants to become a pilot partly because his father already made his life in racing.[26][27][28] Matt’s questions draw the rare admission that Sam enjoys having someone ask about his interests, though he closes the trip by reporting that his life “continues to be adequate”.[28][29]

He is back visiting in Love Again when Lucy brings Augustus home, and Lucy explains that this is the boy who saved her life.[5][30] When the family offers Augustus the guest room, Sam gets his own warning in after Augustus says Lucy is not his type.[31] He is home again, silently, for the following New Year’s in New Year’s Resolution,[20] and by Made Fresh he is back at school and exists only as the brother whose college applications Carol is still using as a benchmark for Jordan.[12]

Major relationships

Lucy

Lucy waits out her brother’s “Any minute now” with Mike still dangling in Pillow Talk.

Lucy knows exactly how to handle Sam’s guard-dog routine. When he collected her from school as a kid it was with a curt “Sis, come on” before he put himself between her and Mike and steered her away.[1] By seventh grade she had learned to talk him down in his own register. As he dangles Mike over the snow she informs him, without raising her voice, that Mike was only burying her, and when he keeps bopping Mike anyway she just says “Any minute now” and waits.[22] She also knows better than to let him drive anyone home in a snowstorm, and apologises for him the way you apologise for weather.[22][3] Veronica’s commentary calls the two of them birds of a feather,[3] and the family’s more cheerful members rather prove the point by contrast.[12]

Once he is off at college, Lucy insists she does not miss him, and she is not entirely convincing. Her flat “I don’t” comes right after Jordan says he does,[4] and she is happy to tell the table he never needed rules because he never had a life.[10] Yet when Jordan jokes that Sam’s constant blocking of Mike was doing Mike a favour, her face falls.[1] He comes home when the situation with Lucy is serious: first to support their mother’s plan to transfer her,[15] and later to see how she is doing when she returns to Roseville.[11] When she introduces Augustus to the family, she describes Sam to her guest as the only one who’s a dick,[5] which is about as warm a welcome as the two of them ever give each other.

Mike

Sam continues the family tradition of making Mike regret visiting Lucy.

Mike has spent years weathering Sam’s hostility. By Lucy’s own count Sam had known him for eight years by seventh grade,[3] which covers the elementary-school death glares and the physical separations at pickup.[1] The snow-day flashback in Pillow Talk is the relationship in miniature. Sam lifts Mike into the air by the scruff, demands to know “What are you doing on top of my sister?!”, and bops him in the face a few times without ever looking away from Lucy.[2][22] Then he sets Mike down, tells him to get inside before the storm, and offers to drive him home. Mike’s verdict, once safely upstairs, is a shrug and “Eh. He’s okay.”[22][3]

Jordan reads the whole history a little differently. As far as he is concerned Sam moving out means Mike can finally come over as often as he likes,[4] and he jokes that Sam hating Mike was really doing Mike a favour.[1] Their only later main-comic overlap is the hospital in Breaking Up, where Mike walks in to find Sam standing grimly behind his mother, and Lily turns Mike away before anything can be said.[16]

Jordan

Sam walks in on New Year’s Eve just in time to agree with Jordan that Lucy needs help in Ten Seconds to Midnight.

Jordan lives in his brother’s shadow and misses him anyway. He complains that their mother never gave Sam any limits, and Lucy is quick to explain that Sam did not need any, which is why Sam is at Ivyshire and Jordan is headed for some community college.[10] Right after that, Jordan admits he misses him.[4] The comparison follows him all the way to his own applications, when Carol starts to boast about Sam’s lack of rejections right as Jordan opens a thin envelope.[12]

Put the two in a room and they fall straight into the big-brother routine. Jordan greets Sam’s homecoming with a “Hey, bro” and defers to him on the question of Lucy, pointing out that neither of them is the one who needs help.[14] In the BCI story Open Fire, Jordan will only endure their father’s camping trip if Sam is coming too,[32] and Sam spends the trip needling him about being “skin and bones”, his tent-pitching and his incinerated campfire food.[33][34] Jordan gives as good as he gets.[33]

Minor relationships

Carol

Carol dotes on her eldest and leans on him in equal measure. He is “Sammy” to her, one of her three shining stars,[35] and she greets his New Year’s homecoming with a hug.[14] When she frets on the couch that a big step for Lucy might feel like abandonment, he puts a hand on her shoulder and tells her plainly that it wouldn’t, and that Lucy would understand.[15] The same hand lands on her shoulder at the hospital help desk, and a later montage shows him beside her while she weeps.[16][25] The one sour note is that her fondness for him keeps coming out as a measuring stick for the other two.[6][12]

Augustus

Sam takes one look at Augustus and asks “Who’s the creep”, then stares wide-eyed when Lucy explains that Augustus saved her life.[5][30] When Harvey lays down a no-funny-business rule and Augustus replies that Lucy isn’t his type, Sam leans around from behind him with a cold “Good.”[31] Veronica’s commentary declares that particular ship sunk before it left the marina.[31] Augustus then moves into the guest room, and how Sam feels about that has yet to be shown.

Matt

Within the BCI story Open Fire, Matt gets the coldest possible introduction, a “Hi” followed by an ignored handshake and a flat “I heard” when he offers his name.[36] Matt keeps asking anyway, about school and cars and what Sam actually wants to do, and Sam eventually admits that people rarely ask about his interests and that he rather likes it.[28] Matt privately decides Sam is extremely cute. Sam shows no sign of noticing, but he smiles through Harvey’s offer to Matt and joins the group hug that follows.[28][37][38]

Quotes

What are you doing on top of my sister?! Sam, introducing himself to Mike by the scruff in Pillow Talk

Fine. You both better get inside, though. There’s a snowstorm coming. Want me to drive you home? Sam, making Mike an offer he can refuse in Pillow Talk

Why exactly are you leaving them alone? Sam, to his mother as Lucy drags Mike upstairs in Pillow Talk

Sis, come on. Sam, collecting Lucy from elementary school in Dinner Time

You wouldn’t be. She’d understand. Sam, reassuring his mother about Lucy’s transfer in Ten Seconds to Midnight

Good. Sam, after Augustus says Lucy isn’t his type in Love Again

Trivia

  • Veronica’s commentary on his New Year’s homecoming remarked that Sam looked really cool, “like a pilot”.[14] The 2025 BCI story Open Fire later makes a pilot his stated ambition.[28]
  • Veronica gave his age as 19 in 2017.[39]
  • Veronica considers him a similar character to Felix from the track team, minus Felix’s ability to look pleasant at rest.[21]
  • Outside of Ten Seconds to Midnight and Love Again, his other identified present-day main-comic appearances are wordless.[16][25][20]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 8
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Chapter 61: Pillow Talk, page 42
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Chapter 61: Pillow Talk, page 44
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 7
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Chapter 95: Love Again, page 29
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 12
  7. ↑ Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 11
  8. ↑ “Ask response on Sam’s orientation”. 2025-12-13.
  9. ↑ “Ask response on Rachel and Sam”. 2025-12-27.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 6
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 “Ask response on Sam’s college and his visit in Love Again”. 2026-06-14.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 Chapter 128: Made Fresh, page 38
  13. ↑ Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Six, “Unpacking Day”, page 5
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 Chapter 73: Ten Seconds to Midnight, page 3
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 Chapter 73: Ten Seconds to Midnight, page 4
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4 Chapter 75: Breaking Up, page 18
  17. ↑ “Ask response on Lucy’s family being Khao Manee”. 2017-06-01.
  18. ↑ “Ask response on Lucy’s breed and her brothers’ eyes”. 2017-01-20.
  19. ↑ “Ask response on the family’s eye colours”. 2017-11-21.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 Chapter 119: New Year’s Resolution, page 1
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 “Ask response comparing Sam to Felix”. 2026-07-08.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 22.3 22.4 Chapter 61: Pillow Talk, page 43
  23. ↑ “Ask response on when Lucy learned about her transfer”. 2018-03-18.
  24. ↑ Chapter 73: Ten Seconds to Midnight, page 5
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 25.2 Chapter 76: Leaving Home, page 9
  26. ↑ Open Fire, page 7 🔒 (members only)
  27. ↑ Open Fire, page 8 🔒 (members only)
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 28.3 28.4 Open Fire, page 9 🔒 (members only)
  29. ↑ Open Fire, page 18 🔒 (members only)
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 Chapter 95: Love Again, page 30
  31. ↑ 31.0 31.1 31.2 Chapter 95: Love Again, page 47
  32. ↑ Open Fire, page 2 🔒 (members only)
  33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 Open Fire, page 6 🔒 (members only)
  34. ↑ Open Fire, page 11 🔒 (members only)
  35. ↑ Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 5
  36. ↑ Open Fire, page 5 🔒 (members only)
  37. ↑ Open Fire, page 16 🔒 (members only)
  38. ↑ Open Fire, page 17 🔒 (members only)
  39. ↑ “Ask response on Sam’s age”. 2017-06-16.
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