#SEE YOU IN THE FUNNY PAGES ORIGIN TV#

If he’d had a dubiously raincoated older-man acquaintance called Flasher it wouldn’t have been much of a surprise. British Dennis had a canine accomplice, Gnasher, who would have eaten American Dennis’ sweet dog, Ruff, in two seconds flat, and he later had a disgusting pig, Rasher. He carried a peashooter, water pistol and catapult, and his exploits generally ended in corporal punishment. The red and black stripes of his jersey expressed the buzzing wave band of his criminality. British Dennis was knobby-kneed and low-browed, gleefully scowling under an inkblot of high-speed hair. Physically, the two were day and night: American Dennis was blond and cowlicked, with a round face and the short, ham-like forearms of a “Peanuts” character. British Dennis was much further along the mischief spectrum-a disturbed maverick of prepubescence, a bully, a nemesis, a persecutor of “softies” (in particular the unfortunately recurring Walter), a mean-minded vandal with whom the authorities were in a permanent and justified rage. He did and said the darnedest things you couldn’t stay mad at American Dennis. American Dennis was a little tearaway in dungarees, an adorable scamp pestering poor Mr. Mischief was the common concept: Both Dennises were rowdy boys, running amok, turning the grown-up world on its head.

#SEE YOU IN THE FUNNY PAGES ORIGIN TV#

Each Dennis would carry on for decades, spawning TV shows and theme-park attractions. newspapers and Law’s in the venerable and anarchic British weekly The Beano. Neither had any knowledge of the other’s Dennis until both debuted in the same week-Ketcham’s in the funny pages of 16 U.S. The other was the brainchild of the British cartoonist David “Davey” Law. One was the creation of Hank Ketcham, a former Disney animator in California. They were born simultaneously, in March 1951, two entirely independent and wildly contrasting Dennis the Menaces.

See you in the funny pages origin