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Yes! Finally..

I think the appeal of this stuff for a younger audience is slightly embellished by people who love it so, but it’s certainly more appropriate than most of what DC publishes these days. That kinda begs the question, though, as to why DC is positioning this almost completely out of the range of that audience (and the people who buy stuff for them).

(I suspect it’s because they have very little confidence in this, and might be hedging their bets with a high-margin hardcover.)

I’m more interested in the possibility, however slim, of the Archives line continuing. There are too many Archives titles — THE FLASH, GREEN LANTERN, JUSTICE LEAGUE, LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES, SUPERMAN: THE MAN OF TOMORROW, BATMAN: THE DYNAMIC DUO, etc. — that deserve additional volumes, so hopefully SUGAR & SPIKE won’t be the last DC Archive we see.

“why was this well-known, classic series tabled for so many years, especially when it has obvious appeal for families and parents who want to give their kids “wholesome old comics”

you can love it all you want, but the thought that this is going to be a gateway for kids today is utterly delusional…

I don’t know about SUGAR & SPIKE asa gateway for kids. I think it should be packaged and sold at moms.

Package it to look like it belongs next to BABY BLUES or books along those lines.

But any collection of it is welcome. I hope collectors support it fulsomely, and we get the entire series.

kdb

I wasn’t born when the original series was released, but I had heard so many good things about it from people who were around back then that I really wanted to have it on hand for my kids. Seems like it’s just as appropriate as Archie or Tiny Titans. Something that you want to keep in print.

But there’s no chance I’ll be spending this kind of money on it at this stage. DC blew it for me on packaging and timing.

I agree with Kurt on packaging, maybe even distribute it at grocery stores or other places that expands reach to the right audience.

Jon

They should package it like the way Scholastic does with BONE or Dark Horse does with LITTLE LULU, easier to get into everyone’s hands.

“I suspect it’s because they have very little confidence in this, and might be hedging their bets with a high-margin hardcover.”

We don’t think it will sell, so we’ll put it at a format/price where it’ll sell even less, then when the sales numbers come in we’ll be proven right.

It’s logic like this that put the comic industry where it is today…

I’m glad they’re finally getting this out, although the format seems perverse. DC seems to be bending over backwards to limit the audience for a series that has have far more mainstream potential than they’re giving it credit for. Now Scribbly I could understand in the Archives format. Still, this is something. Is there any hope that DC might pull this and reformat it as they did with the Ditko Creeper material, which was originally solicited as a Showcase Presents phonebook?

Now, on to the next thing: why haven’t we gotten a nice oversized edition of Siegel & Shuster’s pre-Superman work? The giant reproductions in the 75 Years of DC Comics book are a great argument for such a volume.

“It’s logic like this that put the comic industry where it is today…”

respectfully, i disagree. it’s logic like this has has put the industry where it is today:

“hey, i liked it as a kid 40 years ago, so it will sell to kids today.”

SvenJ — you are aware that kids regularly read fiction and illustrated fiction that was published 10 20 30, 50, 100 150, 200 years ago, right?

They watch movies made more than 30 years ago like….STAR WARS.

I agree publishing a kids comic from 50 years ago and expecting it to be a contemporary, Bone level hit is not realistic. (Bone is 20 years old, BTW) But There’s a lot of evidence from parents and librarians that older comics with timeless storytelling can appeal to some kids, and give it a secondary market. Kids have no interest in anything retro — they just respond to what is on the screen or page.

I don’t know that the Archives are “being phased out in favor of the larger $75 omnibus edition”, unless they’ve announced something beyond the books they have scheduled so far. The only $75 omnibus books they’ve scheduled duplicate the contents of previous out-of-print collections. If anything, the Archives seem to have been phased out in favour of the cheaper $30-$50 hardcover format used for the Jack Kirby reprints in the last few years.

Also, it’s worth remembering for those who find the format too expensive, I think every single silver age series that has been published in DC’s Archives line was later published in the black&white Showcase Presents line, with the black&white books frequently going far beyond what was published in the Archives. So publishing a 244-page $60 colour hardcover this year does not rule out publishing a 500-page $20 black&white softcover in two years. That would, in fact, be entirely consistent with past DC publishing strategy. Which, of course, might not be relevant since the people who made those decisions are all gone or in different jobs now…

“We don’t think it will sell, so we’ll put it at a format/price where it’ll sell even less, then when the sales numbers come in we’ll be proven right.”

More along the lines of ‘We think it will sell in only in reasonably low numbers, so we’ll put it in this format that has much better margins than a trade paperback, so at least we can be reasonably sure we’ll bring in enough money to make doing the project worthwhile.’

I think DC is realistic enough to know that when you get into stuff like this, you’re audience becomes a very small corner of what’s already a small niche market for Silver Age reprints. It’s hard to fault them for building in a way to make money from a book like this — I just think it’s too bad that they seem to be so risk averse, particularly in this specific instance when there’s at least a *slightly* better opportunity than most to appeal outside that small niche market.

How have the Mouly/Spiegelman and Craig Yoe childrens’ comics anthologies done in the mass market? My 12-year-old just came home with the Toon Treasury book from his school library this afternoon. It has a couple of Sugar & Spike stories in it. (He wants to know where he can find more Fox & Crow.)

Obviously, Sugar and Spike will sell small numbers in the direct market the way DC usually does these things. But I do wonder if an attentive editor might be able to do for Shelly Mayer something like Dark Horse and D&Q have done for John Stanley–building on a sterling reputation and mountain of neglected comics to create a sustainable market niche with a steady stream of reasonably affordable books. Between Scribbly, S&S and the funny animal strips, Mayer is one of DC’s great talents, and they’ve kept him in a closet forever. If they can’t figure out how to use his legacy in this Golden Age of Reprints, I wish they could farm out the material to someone who might do it justice.

There’s also the possibility that DC’s hoping to use the get-as-many-bites-of-the-apple-as-you-can theory by releasing the book first as an Archives format hardcover then preserving the possibility of later reformatting in a paperback format.

It still seems strange that they’d go for the Archives-like format rather than something like the Kirby omnibus hardcover format, but the fact is that once they do the work to publish this book as a hardcover, that makes it more likely that they’ll later repurpose that work in a paperback format of some sort.

Anyway. With Carl Barks coming from Fanta and Shelley Mayer from DC, it’s looking to be a good time for good humor comics…

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Wow! This is a Schwartz-era Superman tale too. I’d expect this from the Weisinger era. Never read this story, but I wonder if Supes was doing it for charity? That’d be a Schwartz-era twist to it.

I don’t remember the story, but I do recall that Schwartz did almost as many wacked-out covers as Weisinger.

The main difference between them was that Schwartz more often promoted a patina of realism in the stories. But even during the so-called “serious Batman” of Schwartz’s editorship, you got a cover that showed Batman hoisting a suicide-bomber gorilla above his head, which is as goofy as anything from Uncle Mortie.

The story itself isn’t that spectacular…

http://www.comicbookdaily.com/wp/daily_news/crazy-comic-covers-action-comics-454-supermans-energy-crisis/

Does Morgan Spurlock know about this?

Those look like Bob Oskner-drawn wait-staff…

BTW,, thanks for the link, Torsten. Seeing the Superman Solar Panel suit was worth it! Now waiting for that action figure…

Here’s a cross-over waiting to happen!

torstenadair.blogspot.com/2009/12/from-archives-chic-youngs-all-new.html

I’m just bemused by the complete lack of background in that cover, as if some fast-food-franchise had just plopped a location in a vast wasteland of nothing–not even a parking lot…

Sphinx, I agree, yeah it does look like Oskner’s art.

Good thing Supes didn’t go to an All You Can Eat Buffet…

I can believe a man can fly…and I can believe he can eat thousands of hamburgers…what I can’t believe are good looking young women working at a fast food joint in sexy uniforms. This is pure fantasy.

Superman will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.