Sugar and Spike revisited
by Jeet Heer
Thursday, January 13, 2011
On the Comics Reporter site, Tom Spurgeon commented on my earlier Sugar and Spike posting. Tom’s entire comment is worth reading but I wanted to quickly address Tom’s key point: “I don’t feel confident going as far as to suggest — as I think this criticism does — that that there’s no audience for this material presented that way, or that a better audience might be had by skipping this endeavor entirely…. I still think given the inability to snap my fingers and change that company’s culture that I prefer this stuff out on someone’s desk than back in a closet somewhere.”
Far be it for me to suggest that people shouldn’t buy this book. If you have $60 to spare on comics, the Sugar and Spike Archive will be worth picking up, especially if you want to see more books in the series.
Having said that, this remains a terrible format for this material. Even if it has to be done in-house (and I’m not sure it does), DC has a variety of formats to choose from: the Archive, Omnibus, Chronicle, and Showcase presents. And as DC has shown with its Mad and Spirit reprints, even the Archive format can be modified to suit the needs of a particular project.
The other formats, in particular the Chronicle one, would better suit Sugar and Spike. Or DC could just look at what other publishers are doing, particularly Abrams and Drawn and Quarterly, and take inspiration for doing kids comics reprints in a fresh way.
Of course DC has a famously intransigent and hard to change corporate culture. But the one way to change that corporate culture is to criticize their blunders, which is why I wrote my blog post.
These formatting and design decisions don’t get talked about enough, and I think one of the merits of Comics Comics is that we foreground these issue. At the very least, we can try to get the “industry” to think more about these issues.
You can find discussions of Sugar and Spike comics here.
Labels: Sugar and Spike
It’s almost like they’re used to their core audience buying their product no matter what that they don’t even question their assumptions about such things. Then again, as a company right now they seem more concerned with finding multi-media franchises than publishing, especially publishing long-dormant properties with no real mass appeal and certainly no “mass” appeal within the insular world of the comic book direct market. It certainly seems like they could have done what Disney did with the Barks stuff and let someone do it who could do it right instead of keeping it in house.
Yeah, I don’t think you’re getting me, as I clearly state I’m not a big fan of this format, either. I imagine our ideal Sugar & Spike books look very, very close to one another. I just think there’s a fine line between backseat driving publishing decisions and criticizing format choices, and I’m not convinced you or I know enough about DC’s archive line strategies to suggest that their call is as easy as making a more sound aesthetic decision. For all we know, this is the only way they feel they can publish this material and make a profit. For all we know, this is indeed the only way they can make a profit. For all we know, Sugar & Spike fans want this material this way. For all we know, this is the only way they can get these out before DC shuts down their comics publishing this Fall. These decisions are kind of tricky, and while you and I making our aesthetic objections is certainly our right and can end up in a positive good in terms of them reconsidering their strategies, I think you’re being overly dismissive of the countless factors that may come into play.
I mean, from my personal perspective, as I said, that entire line is worthless, as I can’t imagine buying any comics in that format and enjoying them. I think I even contributed an essay to one of the Spirit volumes, and my memory is I couldn’t read the comics in them. But from my personal perspective I would have wanted If-n-Oof — which I loved — in tabloid format to emphasize that beautiful art and maybe a lot cheaper on cheaper paper so I could more easily buy some extra copies for my friends. Now: I can certainly perceive of all the arguments that destroy my position, not the least of which the artist is in the driver’s seat there, and I’m not drawing an equivalency between DC’s likely dysfunctional archival fiefdom and Dan “Real-Life Art Hero” Nadel except in one way: to suggest there are a variety of issues involved and I wasn’t convinced you engaged them or even allowed for them. I didn’t think you were wrong, I thought you were being ungenerous in the way you chose to say so.
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the clarification.
Well, okay, I’m willing to allow that there might be all sorts of publishing factors that I’m not privy to which explain the choice of the Archive format for Sugar and Spike, factors which I should have been more generious in admitting.
If hypothetically it is the only way DC can afford to publish this material, then they made the right decision. But in saying that the book could be done otherwise I pointed out various other formats, some of which DC uses (the Chronicle format, the Omnibus format or the Showcase Presents format) as well as alternative formats used, with some degree of success, by other pubishers. I could have also pointed to the recent Little Lulu and Tubby books from Dark Horse as another example. There are, in fact, many formats for doing kids comics out there. Not all are wildly successful (aesthetically or commercially) but they do well enough. And the Archive format itself is problematic not only for the aesthetic reasons I outline but so as a commercial approach (since various retailers have complained about it, and DC now puts out fewer of these books per year).
But I take your point that allowances have to be made for the “unknown unknowns” (to borrow a Rumsfeldian phrase) of publishing.
If I remember right DC had announced the Sugar and Spike Archive book over a year ago, and then pulled it.
About the only way this makes sense is they’ve got the complete book “in the can” ready to be sent to the printer.
I believe the only time DC uses the Chronicle format is after the material has been published in an Archive edition. I assume this is for cost-related reasons (the cheaper softcover edition appears only after costs for the hardcover edition have been recovered).
Personally, I like the way Dark Horse is currently reprinting the Little Lulu and Tubby comics, I wouldn’t mind seeing Sugar & Spike in the same format.
I don’t believe a Sugar and Spike Archive was previously scheduled and then canceled, and certainly not within the past few years. There was a Superboy book which was pulled off the schedule, possibly because of the Siegel estate copyright claim. And a Captain Marvel “Monster Society” book which was pulled, apparently because someone realized just how racist some of the stories were.
No idea why they’re going with this format. I’ll get it, the discounted online price is less than I’ve paid for some of the issues in there, and less than I’d expect to pay for any one of the three I’m still missing in any condition. But I’d have trouble recommending it to anyone in this format, especially if they want to share it with young children, while I wouldn’t for any of the other formats mentioned, even if the price were such that the cost-per-page were the same as this book (I think the MELVIN MONSTER books are actually more expensive per page than the DC Archives, but I’d have no trouble advising someone to buy one of those for a kid).
Also it’s a shame that DC seems content to ignore the book. I just checked, and the book has never been mentioned on the official DC Comics blog. It would seem to be a no-brainer to throw up at least one free Sugar&Spike story on DC’s online store, with an ad for the reprint at the end, but there’s nothing there. Or include a Sugar&Spike story in their all-ages Free Comic Book Day offering this year, in addition to the usual cartoon tie-in books they’re always plugging.
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i tried several times to reach out for the series the past few years but was rebuffed probably because even when i was at DC, there were always plans for a S&S collection, whether they came to fruition or not. i went to the DC RRP and bob wayne asked what the stores wanted to see in print and cliff biggers said “sugar and spike” and the placed cheered. this was about 12 years ago. so the collection is right on schedule.