SHELDON "Shelly" MAYER!!!

He was called "Shelly" by his friends, and, I'll bet you that just about everyone wanted to be friendly with this great writer-cartoonist-editor.
Sheldon Mayer created the comic book character SCRIBBLY, who appeared early on in THE GOLDEN AGE OF COMICS, then reappeared somewhat later, when Shelly moved over to work at an early incarnation of DC COMICS, the ALL-AMERICAN comics group.
SCRIBBLY later had his own hilarious title, for 15 issues, and they are wonderful and funny comic books.
While Shelly labored as an editor at DC/NATIONAL COMICS for years, he is probably best known for creating, writing, and drawing SUGAR & SPIKE for nearly 100 issues, from 1956 to 1971. Shelly would sign the stories with his initials, causing some readers to wonder who "S.M." was.
I'm telling you, no matter how bad a day I've been having, the antics of these infants can put a smile on my face.
With "Tomorrow's Teenagers", Shelly depicted a wild world, where the toddlers had their own language, one not understood by adults, and the poor little ones, who tried hard to communicate with their parents, just could not understand why their parents could not "speak perfectly good baby talk".
Shelly was forced to put his pencil down due to eye trouble, but later produced some new SUGAR & SPIKE material for the non-US market, and some of this material has surfaced in English language digest sized comic books from DC COMICS, but it does not seem that DC has any interest in reprinting this series, as of 2007, but I hope DC will some day.
DC did, however, produce a set of lovely, soft toys of S&S, which would really make good bookends for a set of reprint volumes of S&S.
As if his legacy of being an editor and writer cartoonist for SUGAR & SPIKE would not be enough, Shelly co-created the wonderful mystery character, "The Black Orchid", for ADVENTURE COMICS, during the 1970's. Further, Shelly wrote much of DC's intended series adapting THE BIBLE, but only one issue was published of this series, however, though it was in a glorious and beautiful "tabloid" format, and this was illustrated by Joe Kubert. I believe Shelly also wrote a similar project, KING ARTUR, and, more sadly, that never saw print at all, that project was partially illustrated, at least, by Nestor Redondo, a brilliant cartoonist from the Phillipine Islands. Shelly also wrote other stories for DC in that time period, and some of these were drawn by master cartoonist Alex Toth, who appears as another entry in this blog.
Of further interest, SUGAR & SPIKE appear in a toy ad,in the 1960's,in work produced on film strips that kids would have been able to project on the wall.
Sadly, the toy itself was not ever produced.
Also, many S&S fans believe that the S&S comic books are the inspiration for the long- running NICKELODEON acrtoon series, RUGRATS.
I do not know if there is any truth to this, but I would not be surprised.
One further thing is that, Shelly also tried to market S&S as a syndicated newspaper feature, which, alas, never came to fruition.
Shelly based S&S on the behaviors of his own children.
Talk about art imitating life!!!