Denis at Seventy

This week on what's the second blog we are looking very much at a boy icon here in the UK part of the lives of boys of the past and those of the present.

The first thing to say is there are two Dennis's in the comic world, the American Dennis and there's Dennis The Menace who is British and like most brits I'd say is the one that we all identify with. 

Our Dennis was born in 1951 in the Beano comic drawn together with his faithful dog, Gnasher by Dennis Law and it is his 70th birthday this year so D C Thompson's Beano Studio Ltd is marking it with a special compilation of classic full comic strips.

The Dennis I grew up with the early 1970's was drawn by David Sutherland who was responsible from 1970 through to 1988 and this is a very good example of a Dennis front and rear page strip from September 14 1974 when I was in Junior school.

Dennis was always menacing - the clue's in the name - sometimes it was the grown ups on the receiving end of it  at other times Walter and his gang of softies but it would never go on for long with going unpunished as in this strip where he like many of us in this era was spanked by his dad with a slipper or sometimes his Granny's Demon Whacker.

It was our world reflected in a comic strip.

You often hear people say "He doesn't look the same any more" which is true but the above sample drawn by David Law for February 27th 1954 goes to show that from the outset he has changed although much of what is happening in that strip would be recognizable to those of us of my generation

One big change was the move into the 1990's and beyond into full colour printing on glossy paper rather than newsprint that originally would of been two colour then expanded to a wider range but all relatively low saturated.

The only glossy editions we had prior to that were the Summer Specials being a mini annual time for school hols.

Dennis was still menacing in the year 2000 but his dad's slipper was put away.

The more modern face of Dennis is more rounded and softened which is in part due to the need to have the Dennis The Menace of the tv cartoon series with restrictions on "acceptable content" from the likes of the BBC match the comic edition which has left him more a cheeky rather than menacing boy that is in the thick of misdemeanours sometimes with other cartoon strips characters such as Toots from the Bash Street Kids.

Today it is Nigel Parkinson who usually draws him

The strength of this book really is not that's a "coffee table" anniversary publication but the high number of original front and rear covers of complete weekly cartoon strips that unless you are a avid comic collector you may not have and the extent to which for those of us of a certain "bone" age it takes us back those weekly stories we loved laughing our socks off at.

I'm pleased to have my copy of it.