Dennis the Menace is, of course, one of the most successful and popular British comic characters of all time. Created by Beano editor George Moonie and the wonderfully talented Davey Law, Dennis first appeared in a half page black and white strip in Beano #452 in 1951 and had his very first book released in 1956. In the early days the Dennis the Menace book was actually a bi-annual affair, meaning today's venture, the 1960 book, was actually the third issued. It cost 5/6 and was a good 80 pages, mostly consisting of a mixture of text stories and comic strips, with the occasional other feature here and there, illustrated almost entirely by Davey Law. Interestingly as well, every single page has red ink with no black and white pages, something I suppose was necessary to show Dennis' famous black and red striped jumper. Before we dive any further into the content though, take a look at the gag on the back cover, where Dennis's dad orders the delivery of a slipper by sail as punishment for Dennis' crimes on the front! Brilliant stuff.
My copy of this book has, unfortunately for me, been well-loved in its time and a few of the pages have been scribbled over by a young Southampton lad who I shan't name and shame, so instead of showing the title page artwork I'll skip ahead into the strips. Here's a good one as it includes a panel of Dennis handing over what is clearly a 1950s Beano, distinctive enough by its red header. Poor Dennis never catches a break, it is remarkable that almost every strip in the books ends with a slipper in one form or another! Here though, he just gets the knee.
Here's an interesting page - The Early Adventures of Little Boy Dennis. If he's meant to be a baby here it's hard to tell as to me he looks pretty much the same as he always does, save for his sitting in a pram. I'm not sure who the artist is, but it isn't Law.
One more strip before we move on to some of the book's other features, and what better a page to look at than this wonderful fireworks story! This page also illustrates well an artist working in the style of Law with a four panel gag at the bottom, something known as "ghosting".
Here's a breakdown of what those aforementioned 80 pages consist of: the front and back covers, 48 pages of comic strips, 20 pages of text stories, 3 puzzle pages, 2 pages of jokes, 1 title page, 1 'this book belongs to page', 1 page with a letter from Dennis welcoming readers to the book, and 2 funny poem pages. Here's an example of one of those poems, entitled There's Fun To Be Found in Dustbins'.
Text stories were slowly disappearing from comics by the early 1960s but this book still features ten of them all at two pages long. I've chosen to share this one based solely on the illustrations alone, I particularly like the image of Dennis' parents AND cat jumping for joy as he runs away from home!
Most, if not all, of these strips are reprints I believe, but regardless the annual is a nice way to get a glimpse into an era of The Beano that is very collectable and expensive these days. There's no era of The Beano I don't like, in fact I still buy the occasional new issue from my local comic shop, but there truly is something special about the quality of the content D C Thomson was putting out in the 50s and 60s. If you ever come across any of the comics or books from this time they are well worth a read.
