Once upon a time in small-town California, the old Shop N Save down the street from my parents’ house carried comic book digests, tucked in a corner of the magazine rack. Those cozy little 14 cm × 21 cm books full of reprints were quite in vogue in the early 1980s, and packed 100 pages or so of vintage reading for typically less than a buck.
You’d see superhero reprints from DC and Archie stories, but the best of these digests, for me, were Dennis The Menace Pocket Full of Fun books, gathering up classic comics featuring the adventures of Hank Ketcham’s good-hearted but hyperactive perpetually 5-year-old kid hero Dennis the Menace (no, not that Dennis).
Dennis debuted in comic strips, but soon moved on to his own comic book adventures, overseen by Ketcham but usually drawn by others.
As a budding comics geek, I loved the digest format, although my increasingly aged eyes have found the poorly-printed DC Digests are now almost illegible without heavy magnification – those superhero comics weren’t meant to be shrunk down to pocket size, really. But Dennis, well, his pockets full of fun still hold up pretty well with the less cluttered, more open artwork and lettering, and are still easy to read.
The funny thing is, I never really was a huge fan of the Dennis The Menace comic strip, or Hank Ketchum’s rather too loose and scratchy art. In my humble opinion, a single panel isn’t really the best comics format unless you’re The Far Side or something. The longer Dennis comics stories worked a lot better for me, letting the pint-size characters have actual adventures and giving Dennis a chance to bounce off his uptight parents in funnier settings.
When I read those Dennis Digests, I quickly figured out there was a “good Dennis” artist tucked in amongst the diligent anonymous imitators of that Ketcham style. There was one particular artist whose stories were packed with crisp, detailed artwork, hilarious slapstick and cartooning and a dynamic wit and energy that many of the other Dennis stories lacked.
It took me years to figure out who that “good Dennis” artist was. Al Wiseman (1919-1988) was the Dennis “ghost” artist for many years. Working with writer Fred Toole he cracked out dozens of great Dennis comics stories in the ‘50s and ‘60s I discovered reprinted in those Pocket Full of Fun digests.
There’s something about Wiseman’s style I loved and still love. His cartoony characters are drawn slicker, with more style, his artwork lusher and more detailed – dig those fine ’50s style architectural backgrounds! And the lettering in Wiseman comics sparkles with personality, from the mellow “typewriter” conversational wording to the sharp, angular “shock” script he uses for yelling and screaming (and there’s always a lot of those in Dennis the Menace comics).
These comic adventures were based in realism – Dennis a precocious but recognisable kid, his parents frazzled Henry and soothing Alice, his gang of neighbourhood friends. The grounded adventures tended to revolve around things like Christmas, family vacations, playing with your best pals – and as chaotic as they got, rarely moved into total fantasy, suiting Wiseman’s exquisitely researched art well.
The stories became tailored to Wiseman’s strengths and particularly in a series of dazzling “holiday” specials – Dennis The Menace Goes To Hawaii, Washington DC, Mexico, Hollywood, etc – where all his skill at detailed renderings really came together. Goes To Hawaii is reportedly one of the best-selling comics of ALL TIME, with 4.5 million copies sold over several printings.
Ketcham continued drawing the daily Dennis strip till his death but somehow Wiseman and Toole’s work never quite got the appreciation or credit it deserved. Some of their work (along with the also very good Owen Fitzgerald, who had a looser style) was reprinted in some fine hardcover books a few years back, a series which sadly only ended up three volumes long.
At their best those Dennis digests packed with Wiseman goodness hit that “comics for kids and adults” sweet spot that geniuses like Carl Barks’ Donald Duck and John Stanley’s Little Lulu did.
I long ago lost my childhood Dennis digests but have slowly rebuilt the collection over the years. Any time I see those Dennis digests pop up these days on the open market, I grab them, and any other vintage Dennis comics collecting that sweet Wiseman art.
Nik Dirga 