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Complete Dennis #3-4
Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace 1955-1958 Box Set
A swell custom-designed case containing the third and fourth volumes of Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace with strips from the years 1955 through 1958. (Sorry, case is not peanut butter or root beer resistant.) Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace was Fantagraphics' second "complete" series of newspaper strip collections and one of the most successful books in the company's history, greeted by reviews with praise similar to that garnered by The Complete Peanuts. We are proud to present a slipcased set of the third and fourth volume in the series, covering the years 1955 through 1958 in two gorgeously-designed books, just in time for the holidays.
Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace publishes every single panel strip from handsome and thick hardcover volumes. Ketcham's legendary pen and ink work achieves its full flowering in these collections as do the various situations and themes that Ketcham would return to again and again. 1,252 black-and-white full-page comic panels
Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace publishes every single panel strip from handsome and thick hardcover volumes. Ketcham's legendary pen and ink work achieves its full flowering in these collections as do the various situations and themes that Ketcham would return to again and again. 1,252 black-and-white full-page comic panels
1344 pages, Hardcover
First published January 15, 2007
About the author
Hank Ketcham
368 books17 followersHenry King "Hank" Ketcham was an American cartoonist who created the Dennis the Menace comic strip, writing and drawing it from 1951 to 1994, when he retired from drawing the daily page and took up painting full time in his studio at his home. He received the Reuben Award for the strip in 1953. The strip continues today in the hands of other artists.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 28, 2009
http://www.miamisunpost.com/archives/...
Bound - Miami SunPost Feb. 26, 2009
A Menace Among Us
Hank Ketcham’s Dennis Gets Beautifully Boxed
By John Hood
There’s something intrinsically elegant about a single comic strip frame, an inherent simplicity born of both necessity and design, especially if that frame comes not as one in a series but as the whole of the story itself. One solitary panel that tells an entire tale.
Few better illustrators could tell a tale as wholly or as elegantly as Hank Ketcham, creator of the immortal Dennis the Menace who, over the course of four decades, never once failed to create arcs from one-lined, single-framed panels.
The good folks at Fantagraphics Books have just released volume 5 of Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace 1959-1960 (Fantagraphics, $24.99), a nearly 7-pound brick of a book that will leave you blocks of pure pleasure. Personally, I’m still scouring through the mammoth two-volume box set that covers the years ’55-’58, a set so big it could act as a worthy door stop for a vault if it didn’t look so damn good on my shelf — and in my hands.
Launched in 1950 and inspired by the doings of his very own son, Ketcham’s Dennis the Menace quickly embedded itself in the day-to-day lives not just of Americans, but of nearly the whole wide world. In fact, to this day the panel appears in 1,000 newspapers in 48 countries and 19 languages. And while ol’ Hank shuffled off this mortal coil back in 2001, his long-time assistants Ron Ferdinand and Marcus Hamilton continue the hijinks in the tradition in which the series was born.
It’s a tradition which insists that a story need not ever be over told. Take some of the acute summations of adult hypocrisy which appear in the volume covering the years '55-'56. In one panel, Dennis and family are at table with what appears to be a distinguished guest. The imp utters a very unfortunate “When is Dad gonna butter up his boss?” In another, a matronly woman is seated in the Mitchell’s living room and Dennis let’s slip “I don’t see no blue streak when she talks!” And a third finds the Menace perched on the arm of the family couch, eye-to-eye with an elderly gent and asking “Can I see the first penny you ever earned?”
It’s obvious that Dennis got his inquiries directly from overhearing adults’ seemingly private conversations. And in one fell swoop he unmasks the tragic face adults are required to put forth when navigating the social milieu. That the lad also happens to leave both parties equally shame-faced and aggrieved brings an undeniable joy to the proceedings, no matter what age you are.
Of course, this is a simpler, more wholesome kind of humor, a comedy that needs none of the 21st century’s vulgarity to get its point across. Yet here, where any given page unveils a yesteryear of post-war plentitude, the crack in the veneer remains apparent, even if it is never, ever mentioned.
Fantagraphics Books, as you may know, is the Seattle-based publisher of such stellar series as Hate, Eightball and Love and Rockets, as well as a number of impeccably-rendered, standalone graphic novels: Dan Clowes’ Ghost World, Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth, and Joe Sacco’s Palestine, itself originally a series of nine, and surely the only work of its kind to reference Edward Said’s Orientalism, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes.
Six years ago, indie book distributor Seven Hills went bust and almost took down Fantagraphics with them. But a heartfelt appeal to comics fans backed by an ingenious decision to publish handsome editions of The Complete Peanuts brought the firm back from the brink and on to a plateau of their own. In fact, that series of 2-year sets (of which ’71/’72 is slated to stand in April), not only became a beautiful, best-selling collection, but also contains perhaps the most incredible array of introductions ever assembled, from Garrison Keillor and Walter Cronkite, to Hal Hartley and John Waters, to name but an odd few.
Fantagraphics is the kinda house that both commands respect and deserves support, even if many of their titles seem to be entire edifices of their own. Who else in this wild world of ours breaks bad with such utter goodness? And who else reveres the past with as much certitude, even as it forges a bold future? And though you might be one of the few who don’t see the keen behind Ketcham’s immortal 5.5-year-old, you’d be one of the very, very few. And that’s a loneliness I wouldn’t wish a single panel of upon anyone.
Get with Dennis the Menace through Fantagraphic or on the tyke’s official site at dennisthemenace.com.
Bound - Miami SunPost Feb. 26, 2009
A Menace Among Us
Hank Ketcham’s Dennis Gets Beautifully Boxed
By John Hood
There’s something intrinsically elegant about a single comic strip frame, an inherent simplicity born of both necessity and design, especially if that frame comes not as one in a series but as the whole of the story itself. One solitary panel that tells an entire tale.
Few better illustrators could tell a tale as wholly or as elegantly as Hank Ketcham, creator of the immortal Dennis the Menace who, over the course of four decades, never once failed to create arcs from one-lined, single-framed panels.
The good folks at Fantagraphics Books have just released volume 5 of Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace 1959-1960 (Fantagraphics, $24.99), a nearly 7-pound brick of a book that will leave you blocks of pure pleasure. Personally, I’m still scouring through the mammoth two-volume box set that covers the years ’55-’58, a set so big it could act as a worthy door stop for a vault if it didn’t look so damn good on my shelf — and in my hands.
Launched in 1950 and inspired by the doings of his very own son, Ketcham’s Dennis the Menace quickly embedded itself in the day-to-day lives not just of Americans, but of nearly the whole wide world. In fact, to this day the panel appears in 1,000 newspapers in 48 countries and 19 languages. And while ol’ Hank shuffled off this mortal coil back in 2001, his long-time assistants Ron Ferdinand and Marcus Hamilton continue the hijinks in the tradition in which the series was born.
It’s a tradition which insists that a story need not ever be over told. Take some of the acute summations of adult hypocrisy which appear in the volume covering the years '55-'56. In one panel, Dennis and family are at table with what appears to be a distinguished guest. The imp utters a very unfortunate “When is Dad gonna butter up his boss?” In another, a matronly woman is seated in the Mitchell’s living room and Dennis let’s slip “I don’t see no blue streak when she talks!” And a third finds the Menace perched on the arm of the family couch, eye-to-eye with an elderly gent and asking “Can I see the first penny you ever earned?”
It’s obvious that Dennis got his inquiries directly from overhearing adults’ seemingly private conversations. And in one fell swoop he unmasks the tragic face adults are required to put forth when navigating the social milieu. That the lad also happens to leave both parties equally shame-faced and aggrieved brings an undeniable joy to the proceedings, no matter what age you are.
Of course, this is a simpler, more wholesome kind of humor, a comedy that needs none of the 21st century’s vulgarity to get its point across. Yet here, where any given page unveils a yesteryear of post-war plentitude, the crack in the veneer remains apparent, even if it is never, ever mentioned.
Fantagraphics Books, as you may know, is the Seattle-based publisher of such stellar series as Hate, Eightball and Love and Rockets, as well as a number of impeccably-rendered, standalone graphic novels: Dan Clowes’ Ghost World, Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth, and Joe Sacco’s Palestine, itself originally a series of nine, and surely the only work of its kind to reference Edward Said’s Orientalism, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes.
Six years ago, indie book distributor Seven Hills went bust and almost took down Fantagraphics with them. But a heartfelt appeal to comics fans backed by an ingenious decision to publish handsome editions of The Complete Peanuts brought the firm back from the brink and on to a plateau of their own. In fact, that series of 2-year sets (of which ’71/’72 is slated to stand in April), not only became a beautiful, best-selling collection, but also contains perhaps the most incredible array of introductions ever assembled, from Garrison Keillor and Walter Cronkite, to Hal Hartley and John Waters, to name but an odd few.
Fantagraphics is the kinda house that both commands respect and deserves support, even if many of their titles seem to be entire edifices of their own. Who else in this wild world of ours breaks bad with such utter goodness? And who else reveres the past with as much certitude, even as it forges a bold future? And though you might be one of the few who don’t see the keen behind Ketcham’s immortal 5.5-year-old, you’d be one of the very, very few. And that’s a loneliness I wouldn’t wish a single panel of upon anyone.
Get with Dennis the Menace through Fantagraphic or on the tyke’s official site at dennisthemenace.com.
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