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Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Sugar&Spike - Little Arthur Becomes a Mad Professor!

The Chronicles of Sheldon Mayer's Sugar & Spike

Little Arthur Becomes a Mad Professor!
Sugar & Spike #42 [1962]
6 pages
Reprints: None
Dedication: Carol Chernoff (age 12), Illinois

One of the major recurring characters in the series is Little Arthur, a slightly older boy whose mother Myrna often brings him over.  Arthur first appears in #17, returns in #22 and then shows up every few issues for the rest of the series, including the new material drawn in the 1980s.  Arthur is quite a terror, so the kids learn to dread his visits, which usually consist of Arthur pulling Sugar's ponytail, which leads to Spike biting him.  Arthur is old enough that he speaks grown-up talk rather than baby-talk, so he lie about what happened, getting the kids punished (as Sugar once says, he doesn't so much speak in grown-up talk as he fibs in it).  Of course, his plans always backfire (I don't think the Comics Code allowed them to show success through lying).

In this variation, Arthur has a new interest in medicine, and pretty much ignores Sugar and Spike as he works on his plans for a self-propelled stretcher. The kids figure he must be sick, and are quite happy with that, until Arthur tries to put his ideas into practice, converting a coffee table to a stretcher and trying to use them as test patients.

Characters: Sugar, Spike, Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Plumm, Little Arthur, Myrna
Damage: That coffee table is history, all Arthur's fault.  The lamp, that was all Spike



"He should be sick more often! It improves him!"

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