Smurfing incredible

I had my doubts, but suddenly I'm looking forward to the SMURFS film...

Sugar&Spike - Feature Pages - Write Your Own

In addition to the comics, SUGAR AND SPIKE was known for the many interactive feature pages, which were also done by Sheldon Mayer.  Always fun, although responsible for many of the back issues you find being in less than stellar condition.  The "Write Your Own Comic Page" started with the very first issue, and continued right to the end, missing only a few issues (and with a few variations, like scrambled panels).  For most of the run it featured two unnamed boys seen above, a few years older than the toddler stars of the series, having various slapstick adventures that don't really need words to understand, but provide ample opportunity for gags.  There is one episode which features Sugar interacting with the boys, so it looks like they are in the same neighbourhood.  Towards the end of the series, the pages would sometimes feature Sugar and Spike, or their supporting characters Bernie the Brain and Little Arthur, instead of our regular stars.

Not sure if the upcoming reprint will include the various feature pages like these, it would be nice if they are in there, as they add a lot to the experience.  Although I picture someone buying a hardcover years from now and finding the paper-dolls cut out, and the "Write Your Own" comic page filled in...

This page appeared in SUGAR AND SPIKE #32 [1961].

Sugar&Spike - Cats? Meowch!

The Chronicles of Sheldon Mayer's Sugar & Spike

Cats? Meowch!
Sugar & Spike #6 [1957]
1 page
Reprints:  The Sugar And Spike Archives #1 [2011]

Spike's dad comes home to find the kids sitting in the corner, apparently for finger-painting.  He can't understand that, until he finds out what they were painting with, and the feline invasion that resulted.

A very cute example of the singe page stories that Mayer excelled in. The cats in this one are especially adorable.

A few issues later in the letter column there was a note from a reader who didn't quite understand the punchline to this story. Oddly I read the issue with the letter long before I read this issue, so I was wondering what the letter-writer meant. It's unfortunate that the upcoming reprint probably won't include letter columns, as they're a delight.

Characters: Sugar, Spike, Mr. Wilson, Mrs. Wilson, dozens of cats
Damage: The walls can be cleaned, I guess.  That furniture might never be the same
Punishment: In the corner, twice


"I wish they'd make up their minds!"

Sugar&Spike - Glx Sptzl Glaah #1 [1977]

I've been waiting for a decent Sugar & Spike reprint since the mid-1980s. That makes me a late-coming band-wagon jumper compared to the guys who put together GLX SPTZL GLAAH #1 back in 1977. I believe it was the only issue of this fanzine devoted to all the works of Sheldon Mayer, with special emphasis on Sugar & Spike.

That cover up above is, of course, by Mark Evanier, who I assume most people reading this are familiar with, though you might not have seen his artwork before. He also writes a 2-page article about Sugar & Spike, in particular the story "Who's Sorry Now?" from #4, which will be included in the upcoming reprint.

A lot of other contributors to the 28-page fanzine.

Well, editor Ken Gale has a site with an article about Mayer over here, and archives of his comic book radio show 'Nuff Said. Rich Morrissey is sadly no longer with us, I exchanged a few e-mails with him back in the 1990s, nice guy. Ron Goulart is a shockingly prolific author. Harry Broertjes is a name associated closely with Legion of Super-Heroes fandom. Mike Gold's edited a lot of comics over the years, and writes for ComicMix now. A few of the other names sound familiar, but I'm not sure if they're the same people I'm thinking of.

Anyway, fun little magazine, with articles about Scribbly, Black Orchid and the Three Mouseketeers, lots of fan art (including paper dolls for the kids in Legion of Super-Hero costumes), a few samples of Mayer's art (including a short note on an illustrated form letter he sent to a fan) and more.

Sugar&Spike - Sugar, the Sweet Little Mommie

The Chronicles of Sugar & Spike

Sugar, the Sweet Little Mommie
Sugar & Spike #95 [1971]
1 page
Reprints: None

Sheldon Mayer did some great single-page (sometimes half-page) stories throughout the run of the series. That's a form he was used to from his early days, working for newspaper syndicates and doing single page stories for the early comic books that imitated the format of the comic strip reprints that made up the bulk of the content in those days. He also, on at least two occasions, prepared some proposal material for an S&S comic strip.

This is typical of the single-page strips, just the two kids interacting in a high-energy way with a quick punchline. In this case, Sugar gets frustrated with the lack of cooperation from her dolly, while Spike tries to reason with her, a folly to be sure, until he realizes it's better for him to just play along. From the prism of the 21st century you might worry about the roots of Sugar's aggression, and wonder if she'll need some anger management help in later years, but ignoring that it's a nice look at how seriously kids can take their make-believe, and how the relationship between Sugar and Spike works.

By the way, the story code (461) on this page suggests it was drawn some years earlier, around #70 in 1967, but it wasn't used at the time. This was possibly because the book went to full-issue stories around that time (there's a twenty issue stretch with only two single-page stories).

Characters: Sugar, Spike
Damage: the doll looks pretty sturdy, probably came through okay.
Sugar's treatment of Spike: I'm more worried about damage to Spike. Sugar knocks him over and shakes him pretty roughly

"Tsk! Tsk! How silly can you get?"

My Collection - SUGAR & SPIKE [1956 Series]

[For the unofficial "Sugar & Spike Awareness Month", a repeat and updating of an old post]

Sugar & Spike [1956 series]
65 issues [1957 - 1971]
6 - 11, 19, 25 - 27, 29, 31 - 32, 37, 41 - 42, 44, 48 - 61, 65 - 98

Boy, this is some book. 98 total issues published, all written and drawn by Sheldon Mayer, over 15 years. The last of those came out when I was about Spike's age and probably getting up to similar antics. This is one of my favourite comics of all time, by one of my favourite cartoonists.

I first encountered the characters in a mid-1980s reprint digest, sometime after it was published. Don't even recall where or why I got it, but I do know that I liked it a lot. A few years later I happened upon a comic shop that had all its back-issues at half-price, and looked through for anything interesting (I recall getting my first taste of Kirby's JIMMY OLSEN at the same time), and they had some beat-up later issues of SUGAR & SPIKE for a few bucks each. Even better than the digest. Been picking it up ever since, getting a pretty decent collection in widely varied conditions (a few with pages missing or with the Write-Your-Own pages written or coloured on). Keeping all of these at least until the unlikely day that they're reprinted, and probably a lot longer. Didn't get any issues for a while, but now thanks to the internets (invented by Bernie the Brain, no doubt) I've got some more, and might actually one day track down the 33 I'm missing

It's hard to explain exactly why I love this even more than the work of other contemporary humour cartoonists like Barks or Kelly or Schulz or whoever. I guess everyone has a few cartoonists who just manage to speak to a part of their brain, depending on exactly when they first encountered them and any other variables. For lack of a better term, cartoonists who feel like home. I'd say three reach that level for me, and Mayer is one of them (one of the others should be obvious, the other, well, is still a few dozen entries down on this set of posts, but there's a clue in the name of the weblog).

For me just about everything just works in Mayer's work. The basic concept of S&S is brilliant in its simplicity. Babies who can talk to each other but not to adults. But far beyond the concept, Mayer's execution was sheer genius. He's one of those cartoonists who can draw everything funny, so the facial expressions, the body language, all the background bits, the character designs, everything on the page contributes to the humour. The writing easily matches that, with lots of explorations of the life of a baby, both logical and fanciful as the story calls for. I especially like how effortlessly Mayer seems to clearly define and constantly reinforce the differences between Sugar and Spike without needing to say it explicitly. A lot comes out just in how they talk and act towards each other.

In the later issues Mayer started doing longer stories and then injecting fantasy elements in the stories (most notably in regular character Bernie the Brain introduced in #72 and soon a de facto third star of the book, getting cover billing for a while). That stuff still works for me, and indeed many of my early favourites are among those stories since that was the first stuff I read, but I'm glad that later Mayer backed off a bit from the fantasy elements, and did a healthy mix for stories in the last dozen issues (plus the later new stories he did for foreign markets).

Okay, I'll shut up now. Just wanted to write enough to justify the number of scans I wanted to include. All complete stories, click on them and check them out.

Notable issues:

Eh, all of them.

Sugar&Spike - Uncle Charley Returns

The Chronicles of Sheldon Mayer's Sugar & Spike

Uncle Charley Returns!
Sugar & Spike #61 [1965]
4 pages
Reprints: None
Dedication: Lisa, Jimmy and Andrea Thomson (ages 3, 1 1/2 and 2 months) and their Aunt Rayline, New Westminster, Canada

Sugar's Uncle Charley (her mother's younger brother) is one of the best recurring characters in the series. He first shows up in "Busy Corners", the best story in the first issue of the series, which establishes that he's the one adult who truly understands what kids like, toys that make loud ka-bom noises (usually as part of his tests on his own theories of child rearing), and appears on a regular basis thereafter to play out variations on that theme, usually ending with him sharing the punishment of sitting in the corner. Charley is a traffic cop, and the kids always instantly know he's arrived from his put-put (motorcycle) out front.

In this short tale, Charley's gift is a record used to teach parakeets to talk, which Charley thinks can do the same for Sugar and Spike. Sugar's mother reluctantly agrees, but then gives up just as the kids figure out what's expected of them. Wanting to make their favourite Uncle happy, they decide to copy the next word he says, which unfortunately for him turns out to be "Baloney". The kids' gleeful repetition of "Bawoney" at the top of their lungs earns all three of them a (completely unjustified, in my opinion) trip to the corner.

Characters: Sugar, Spike, Uncle Charley, Mrs. Plumm
Property Damage: some wet cement gets some footprint action
Sugar's treatment of Spike: drags him around by his feet

"Sure! He's our friend! And he knows he's not smart enough to learn baby-talk!... So he's trying to teach us his language!"