Friday 19 March 2021

Menacing



I was made aware this week of a rather significant (and genuinely newsworthy) anniversary: My childhood hero Dennis the Menace has just celebrated a significant birthday. Apparently, young Dennis first graced the hallowed pages of The Beano on 12 March 1951, so I make that 70 years. And because he arrived as a fully formed 10 year old that would make him 80 if he's a day. 
I began reading about the naughty schoolboy's scrapes in the late 1960s when I was a little bit younger than him; though, I've got to hand it to him, he's aged a lot better than me.
Along with The Dandy (for my younger bro) I remember both comics dropping on our doormat religiously every Thursday morning. Looking back I don't think my parents cancelled the subscriptions at the local newsagent till both my brother and I were well into our teens; I would often find dad poring over one or the other in his favourite armchair, guffawing loudly. Happy Birthday, Dennis! 



8 comments:

  1. Ah, lovely to see the Swedey McSwedeface brand is branching out! Lovely pic.
    Happy birthday to Dennis - one of the long-standing Beano/DC Comics artists lives near here, I met him once, very nice man, very interesting too to find out that Dennis was first sketched on the back of a cigarette packet in a pub! Also he is colour-blind (his artist, not Dennis, although of course he might be too)!

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    1. Hi C, not a bad day's work was it? I heard the reason why he sported a red and black jumper is that they were the most readily available inks during that time!

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  2. Read it through the mid 70s and into the 80s. Like yourself, I was probably still reading the Beano into my teens. In fact, there was probably a couple of years when I was reading both the Beano and Kerrang. One of them was a cheaply-produced comic with 40 year-old characters acting like 10 year olds, and the other had Lord Snotty. Boom boom.

    Do you remember the Dennis the Menace Fan Club? The badges were masterpieces of pop art. Side view of Dennis, and hairy Gnasher one with moving eyes.

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    1. Snooty, not Snotty. Monday morning.

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    2. H - Niche crossover alert: Phil Lewis out of Girl was often referred to as Lord Snooty by the UK rock press.

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  3. Ah, happy memories of the Beano. I ended up in the Sick Kids hospital for about a fortnight when I was 11 and there seemed to be an endless supply of such comics to cheer us all up - Must have got through 100s of them.

    We had a wee holiday in Dundee a couple of summers ago and it coincided with a DC Thomson exhibition - Wrote about it here.

    https://jukeboxtimemachine.com/2018/07/31/dundee-city-of-jam-jute-journalism-and-the-party-fears-two/

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    1. The Desperate Dan statue alone almost warrants a visit to Dundee; tho' can't see the cake grabbing me.
      Oh, and the fact that Dundee and Dundee Utd are the closest local football teams in the UK - just yards apart.

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