Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace 1955-1956 (Vol. 3)
The 1950s saw the apogee of the magazine gag cartoon, with dozens of skilled artists plying their trade in publications ranging from theSaturday Evening PosttoPlayboy. Ketcham's one-panel syndicated newspaper cartoons were as graphically adroit as any, but it wasn't his visual sophistication that keptDennis the Menaceon the comics page for half a century. Funny-pages readers aren't that artistically demanding. Rather, it was consistently sharp humor and the well-defined personalities of Dennis, his beleaguered parents, curmudgeonly neighbor Mr. Wilson, and the rest of the cast, who were never more engaging than in these early panels.Gordon FlaggCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved