I’m impressed what how Nick Barrucci, Joe Rybrandt, and the whole Dynamite Entertainment crew pair up dissimilar characters routinely. Right now ThunderCats are meeting The Powerpuff Girls over the course of the five issues in a crossover series. I didn’t see that one coming. Some of their other recent team-ups have included:

• Elvira + Vincent Price
• Mars Attacks + Red Sonja
• Johnny Quest + Space Ghost
• Django + Zorro
• Charlie’s Angels + The Bionic Woman

Also – Free Comic Book Day teased their upcoming Gargoyles + Fantastic Four miniseries. Dynamite’s been doing this a long time, and I think now we’re kind of used to it.*

Thumper & Dwarfs

That makes The Big Little Book I read this morning all more interesting. This one teams up Thumper, a supporting character from Disney’s Bambi, with The Seven Dwarfs, first seen in 1937’s Snow White. It’s a charming story written and illustrated by Carl Buettner is that classic Disney style. The official title is Thumper and the Seven Dwarfs by Walt Disney, but it was really Buettner. He ensured that every character, every frame, and every situation was perfectly “on model”. Totally charming and so much fun.

Unlike most Big Little Books, this one is all comic panels. There are no text pages facing the illustrations, as is the standard operating BLB procedure. One reason may be because this story was originally released as a comic, Dell’s Four Color #18, in 1943.

And that makes it the very first Disney crossover! It may technically be a triple-team-up, as the bad guy for one section is the Giant from The Brave Little Tailor. I just learned there was a sequel to this one entitled The Seven Dwarfs and Thumper. Grumpy must’ve held out for top billing.

Immigrant Panda

I also read an oversized Big Little Book. It’s a little thinner and about twice as tall as a normal one. It’s called Andy Panda Comics and like the Thumper/Seven Dwarfs books, it has no text pages. I’m not deep into Andy Panda, but I know he’s part of the Walter Lantz stable of characters. In fact, Woody Woodpecker was a spin-off character from his cartoon shorts.

This story had a charm to it as well, as Andy is adopted by a little boy and his gorgeous older sister. They want to take him America. As this was printed during WWII, that all makes sense. Pandas always seem so exotic and not necessarily endemic to the states, but if it works for Andy it works for me! We’re a nation founded by immigrants, after all.

Dick Tracy visits the Radio Station

The third BLB I enjoyed is a Dick Tracy story. It turns out there were over twenty Dick Tracy Big Little Books, and the very first Big Little Book, in 1932, was The Adventures of Dick Tracy.

One part that was particularly interesting to me was when Dick Tracy needs to call one of the police chiefs, he stops at a Wireless Office (I think this is a radio station) to send him the message. Get Smart had shoe phones, we all have cellphones, but Tracy had to stop at a radio station just to dial up the boss

These BLB books were gifted to me from the W. R. Tuner collection. Thanks so much, Bill! I’m grateful.

*It’s a bit self-serving, but if you like this type of thing you might also like AHOY Comics’ Toxic Avenger Team-Up series. It pairs Toxie with other (unexpected) AHOY properties – like the New Jersey Devil (from Project:Cryptid) and DragonFlyMan (from The Wrong Earth). This series just debuted and it’s a hoot!