Tom & Jerry Comics #79
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeTom & Jerry Comics #79 (February 1951, Dell) marks the comic book debut of Spike and Tyke — the bulldog father-and-son duo created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera — inaugurating a backup feature that ran continuously through issue #215 in May 1963 and eventually spun off into its own dedicated Dell title. The issue demonstrates Dell's strategy of packaging the Tom and Jerry franchise as a full MGM cartoon universe in print, assembling characters from across the studio's theatrical output — Droopy, Barney Bear, Benny Burro, and others — into a monthly anthology that gave young readers far more story content per issue than a single-character comic. Because the comic gave both Spike and Tyke dialogue (something their animated counterparts largely lacked), issue #79 also represents an early instance of comics expanding and reinterpreting animated source material rather than simply transcribing it.
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The Tom & Jerry Comics series itself grew directly out of Dell's Our Gang Comics (launched 1942), which had long hosted Tom and Jerry, Barney Bear, Benny Burro, Droopy, and Tuffy as backup features before the title was renamed to center the cat-and-mouse duo around issue #60. By February 1951, Dell and its production partner Western Publishing had refined the anthology format into a dependable monthly, with the addition of Spike and Tyke in #79 reflecting the characters' rising popularity following their 1949 animated introduction in 'Love That Pup.' Specific writer and artist credits for issue #79 have not been confirmed in available sources, as Dell of this era rarely printed bylines in its funny-animal titles.
Trivia · 7 facts
- First comic book appearance of Spike (Big Spike) and Tyke (Little Tyke), the bulldog father-and-son characters created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera; their backup feature ran in this title continuously through issue #215 (May 1963).
- Spike and Tyke were given spoken dialogue throughout their Dell comic stories, a notable departure from their mostly silent roles in the MGM theatrical cartoons.
- The issue is a full MGM cartoon-universe anthology, confirmed to include: Tom & Jerry, Adventures of Tom, Big Spike & Little Tyke, Barney Bear & Benny Burro, Droopy (one-page pantomime gag strip), Wuff the Prairie Dog, Fuzzy & Wuzzy, Flip 'n' Dip, and a Bertie Bird text story.
- Droopy appears as a one-page pantomime strip (inside front cover) and again on the inside back cover — consistent with his ongoing backup role in the title; Droopy had appeared in Dell comics as far back as Our Gang with Tom and Jerry #53 (December 1948), so this is not his first comics appearance.
- Barney Bear and his companion Benny Burro had been Dell backup features since Our Gang Comics #1 (1942), making their continued presence in #79 part of an unbroken nine-year run of MGM backup features in this line.
- The Spike and Tyke comic book debut in this issue eventually fed into a dedicated Dell spin-off series (M.G.M.'s Spike and Tyke), and the characters' DNA was later reworked by Hanna-Barbera into the TV series Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy after MGM shut its cartoon studio.
- Dell/Western reprinted material from this run internationally, including through Editorial Novaro in Mexico (896 issues, 1951–1980) and Rosnock in Australia, giving the issue's debut cast wide global reach.
Cast · 10 characters
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