On March 14, Hank Ketchum’s Dennis the Menace turned 60 with almost no fanfare. This famous five and a half year old creative, but destructive little boy celebrated his birthday in a single panel cartoon surrounded by his family and playmates as he prepared to blow out 60 candles on his cake. Unlike the 75th anniversary celebration of the comic Blondie in which every American newspaper strip of any note was invited to attend, Dennis’ celebration was surprisingly understated. But then Hank Ketchum and his work, to me, always seemed to come in second in the hearts of many.
When Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts, died in 2000 after drawing his strip for nearly 50 years, public words of condolences came from no less than the President of the United States. When Hank Ketchum died in 2001, for whatever reason, he did not get that same level of public and media recognition and attention that Schulz still realizes today eleven years after his death. What is most ironic is that if you Google “Dennis the Menace at 60,” among the first hits you get are not Ketchum’s creation, but rather David Law’s very popular (world-wide) and very British Dennis the Menace. In what is the most amazing set of circumstances since space aliens with a time machine inserted President Obama’s birth announcement in the August 14, 1961 editions of the Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, David Law and Hank Ketchum created a comic with the same name just days (and oceans) apart in 1951.
The main characters bare no semblance to each other, in the that, the British Dennis is an established bully and the American Dennis is just…Dennis. But the British Dennis does celebrate his birthday differently than the American one because as it turns out that he will meet President Obama in his birthday strip. As I said, even in death Hank Ketchum’s creation seems to still come in second in the world of comics.