From The Scoop: Tiny Tim

From the January 19 issue of Gemstone Publishing's The Scoop:

In 1933, a Chicago-based animator by the name of Stanley J. Link began to develop a comic strip about a curiously shrunken boy whose small point of view made a big difference in the lives of his friends and family. The strip was called Tiny Tim, and not soon after its Sunday feature debut, the boy who could make his body smaller than a bird's using a mystical amulet worn around his neck, became a great favorite with children and adults alike.

Within a few years of his initial introduction, Tiny Tim starred in his own line of Big Little Books. The books, many of which included the tagline "based on the famous newspaper strip," allowed Tiny Tim conquests and odysseys on a grander scale than his tiny Sunday strip would allow. In the Whitman Publishing titles, he learned to fly airplanes and foiled dastardly foes, proving that smallness of stature can never dictate one's measure of valiantry or courage.

Over the years, Link's Tiny Tim has been somewhat lost in the annals of history. He falls third in the American lexicon of "Tiny Tim recognition," after the timelessly sympathetic Dickens character of A Christmas Carol and the famed redheaded ukulele player (ironically born the same year as the Tiny Tim strip debuted). Just in case you didn't know, the Tiny Tim of the strip's last name is Grunt.

Even so, the diminutive scamp lives forever in the hearts of comic lovers and collectors, despite the fact that he's been absent from the funny pages of major newspapers since the 1950s.

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