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| ©DC 1992. Sugar and Spike #99 |
This past Sunday afternoon I purchased a real gem of comic history in immaculate condition for 50 cents (it was 50% off weekend at my LCS, Graham Cracker Comics) instead of the usual $1. The original price of the comic was $1 US/60p UK thirty-one years ago, so I picked up a bargain.
The comic in question was Sugar and Spike #99, printed under DC’s Silver Age Classics reprint banner, hitting the stands on Feb 18th 1992.
Sugar and Spike comics are very difficult to pick up in decent condition due to the fact that “kid’s comics” were generally read and re-read and passed around until they fell apart and few have survived as reading copies, let along collectible editions.
A cursory inspection of eB*y shows that good quality back issues up until issue #98 published in 1971 are very rare, and a look specifically at eB*y’s UK storefront shows very few Sugar and Spikes that may have made it to the UK in the sixties and early seventies. I saw only one comic for sale with a T&P stamp for 5p. The Comic Book Price Guide for Great Britain states that Sugar & Spike was imported into the UK from issue #25 Nov 1959, but copies to be found in the UK are either "scarce, very scarce, or rare". I cannot remember ever seeing a copy on the spinner racks of my youth in England.
But somehow Sugar and Spike #99 gets priced as if it is a reprint issue (about £2 GBP), whereas it is in fact a genuine first edition of all new content.
Sugar and Spike had suspended publication back in 1971 due to the failing eyesight of creator Shelly Mayer. In the early 1990's, following Mayer's successful cataract surgery, there was a plan to re-launch the Sugar and Spike title, picking up the numbering after #98 (Cover Date Oct/Nov 1971), but due to the untimely death of creator Shelly Mayer, the only issue ( targeted for #99 ) was published as one of the ten issues selected as a DC Silver Age Classic to commemorate the end of comic printing at the World Color Press in Sparta, Illinois after a period of 37 years, with the move to new printing presses.
It was the only comic in that ten-issue series with new content, and thus was the LAST ALL-NEW DC comic printed at Sparta! Why isn’t this comic in huge demand???? It is a landmark publication.
Go out and buy this issue! Seriously, the four pages of editorial matter and reminiscences by Don & Maggie Thompson, Anthony Tollin, Denny O’Neil, Dick Giordano, Paul Kupperberg and Bill Gaines of Mad magazine at the back of the comic detailing Shelly Mayer’s immense contribution to comics history (he recommended Superman as the strip to debut in Action #1) is worth the price of admission alone.
I wish you all a peaceful Thanksgiving, wherever you may be.
