Abstract
This chapter compares the British and American Dennis the Menace comic strips arguing that despite so many similarities and a common genre the different history of the form in those countries led to two very different comics. These two comics are more distinct from each other than, for instance, Skippy and Ginger Meggs. Yet, in both comics, race is mostly absent from the content, and yet present by its very absence.
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Notes
- 1.
“Dennis the Menace,” Don Markstein’s Toonopedia, http://www.toonopedia.com/dennisb.htm.
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Jonathan Petrie, “Scrawled on a Pack of Players, Dennis the Very First Menace,” Daily Mail, September 6, 2009, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211390/Scrawled-pack-Players-Dennis-Menace.html.
- 3.
Brian Walker, “Introduction,” Hank Ketcham’s Complete Dennis the Menace 1951–1963 (Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2005), xiv.
- 4.
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Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, “Rationing, Austerity and the Conservative Party Recovery After 1945,” Historical Journal, Vol. 37, No. 1 (1994): 173–197.
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Ian Gordon, Comic Strips and Consumer Culture (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998), 89.
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The Beano, https://www.dcthomson.co.uk/brands/the-beano/.
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Stephen Armstrong, “Was Pixar’s Inside Out inspired by The Beano?,” Telegraph, July 27, 2015, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/pixar/11766202/Was-Pixars-Inside-Out-inspired-by-The-Beano.html.
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Gerard Jones, Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 94 and 105.
- 10.
Hank Ketcham, The Merchant of Dennis (New York: Abbeville Press, 1990), 191–192.
- 11.
Hank Ketcham, “Letter to the Editor,” Indianapolis Star, May 22, 1970, 27. Also in Tucson Daily Citizen, June 9, 1970, 23.
- 12.
Ketcham, The Merchant of Dennis, 191
- 13.
Chester M. Hampton, “Times Change But Old Stereotypes Die Hard,” Washington Post, June 6, 1970, A14.
- 14.
Chester M. Hampton, “Racial Stereotype Surfaces Again in Newspaper Cartoon,” Greeley Daily Tribune, June 10, 1970, 4; Chester M. Hampton, “Blacks in Cartoons Deserve Reality,” Akron Beacon Journal, June 14, 1970, 99. Harold E. Baliste Jr., “‘Black Sambo’ Caricature,” Express and News (San Antonio, TX), May 23, 1970, 26.
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Roger Sabin, “Ally Sloper: The First Comics Superstar?,” Image and Narrative, Vol. 4, No. 1 (October 2003), http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/graphicnovel/rogersabin.htm; Nicholas Lezard, “The Modern Hogarths,” The Guardian, December 18, 2004, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/dec/18/comics.
- 18.
Gordon, Comic Strips and Consumer Culture, 37–58.
- 19.
James Parker, “Dennis the Menace Has an Evil British Twin: Meet the Lovable American Cartoon Character’s Sinister Counterpart,” Smithsonian Magazine, March 2016, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/dennis-menace-has-evil-british-twin-180958114/#oHP56A0pRB4bbb4Z.99.
- 20.
P. Galambos and E. W. Evans, “Work-Stoppages in The United Kingdom, 1951–1964: A Quantitative Study,” Bulletin of the Oxford University Institute of Economics & Statistics, Vol. 28, No. 1 (1966): 33–57.
- 21.
David Kunzle, “Marie Duval: A Caricaturist Rediscovered,” Woman’s Art Journal, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring–Summer, 1986): 26–31; Sabin, “Ally Sloper.”
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Gordon, I. (2016). America and Britain: Dennis the Menace (s). In: Kid Comic Strips. Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels. Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55580-9_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55580-9_4
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