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Post by Administrator on Oct 30, 2005 14:44:07 GMT -5
Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace: 1951-1952 By Hank Ketcham (Fantagraphics Books) www.fantagraphics.comI never understood the reverence that cartoonists like Love and Rockets' Jaime Hernandez held for old Dennis the Menace comics. To me, Dennis was just an old TV show, a horrible mid-'90s movie, and a ho-hum gag panel on the comics page I'd browse over on my way to Calvin & Hobbes. But now I see that without Dennis, there'd be no Calvin. And I see why Ketcham is held in such esteem by today's cartoonists. This book reprints the first two years of Dennis the Menace and they're absolutely classic. The years may have watered down the "menace" part of Dennis' title, but at the beginning it was a title truly earned. A devil child who hadn't met a parent, police officer, barber or babysitter he couldn't disrespect, Ketcham perfectly captured how wicked little kids can be. His style shifts over the course of the book, and by the end his Dennis is a hunched-over ball of nastiness just ready to do whatever his id tells him to. Ketcham's linework was simple, but he could convey a lot in his characters faces and through their body language. A one-panel gag is a hard thing to do, but here there are countless winners. This is another fine addition to the line of comic strip reprints that have been coming out recently. The book proved me wrong and showed me how talented Ketcham was and what a true menace Dennis could actually be.
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