Where's Dennis?: The Magazine Cartoon Art of Hank Ketcham

By Hank Ketcham

Book Overview

Although best known as one of the greatest syndicated cartoonists of the twentieth century, Dennis the Menace creator Henry Hank Ketcham also spent nearly a decade as a gag cartoonist for major New York magazines like Colliers and the Saturday Evening Post. In these gag cartoons, which were primarily published between 1942 and 1950, one can already see the endearing troublemaker that would become the protagonist in his long-running strip. (In fact, in his Dennis the Menace cartoons, Ketcham reused some of the gags and images almost verbatim.) Influenced by Virgil Partch and other artists he met during his early days at Disney animation and as an artist banging on doors in New York, Ketcham's trademark visual humor and unerring line work are also very evident in these pre-Dennis cartoons.

Like many young cartoonists of his era, Ketcham spent much of WWII drawing. As a Navy man, he created food conservation and Jap-bashing posters during the day, and at night, he moonlighted as a magazine gag cartoonist producing primarily war-themed gag cartoons, including the regular feature Half Hitch for the Saturday Evening Post. At the end of his tour, he turned down a chance to return to a guaranteed job at Disney. As it turned out, the siren song of magazine cartooning, which at the time was considered one of the pinnacles of the applied arts, proved just too strong. For the next five years, he was a regular contributor to True, Colliers, and the Saturday Evening Post. On the rare occasion, he even made it into The New Yorker, whose ranks at the time included Peter Arno, James Thurber, and Charles Addams.

Collected for the first time are hundreds of Ketcham's long forgotten magazine cartoons. Together they provide a rare glimpse into what would later become one the most beloved comics to grace the comics pages.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560978538
• ISBN13: 9781560978534
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Sophisticated Wit ...

It is interesting to note that Hank Ketcham also drew some very risque comic strips. The humour reflects the mores of the era of the 40s and 50s. For those who thought that era was innocent, Ketcham's frequent strips about middle aged executives with mistress show girls dispels that myth. Interesting how the later Dennis the Menace strip was actually very conservative, with it's "white picket fence" family life.

Fantastic Long-Lost Delights from one of the Greatest Cartoonists

Where's Dennis? The Magazine Cartoon Art of Hank Ketcham is almost indescribably great. I always felt that the artwork in the first couple years of the Dennis the Menace daily comic strip wasn't quite as inspired as the beautifully quick and graceful pen lines of the late-fifties, sixties and seventies. So I wasn't expecting to be blown away by Ketcham's pre-Dennis work. Boy, was I wrong. I was totally dazzled by the artwork in this book. "Where's Dennis" has jumped right up to my short list of favorite cartoon books, along with Harvey Kurtzman's "Hey Look" and the Roy Crane collection from Luna Press, "Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy." This 200-page book is filled with some of the most delicious cartooning you will ever see. Some of it's even in color! It totally bridges the gap between "sophisticated" magazine cartooning of the post-war "slicks" and the more conservative newspaper comic strip work that followed. Thanks to Shane Glines and Alex Chun and Fantagraphics Books and the Ketcham estate for making this happen!

Rare ketcham is a rare treat...

This book is almost pure delight. To see where Hank's style originated is fantastic. There are a handful of old editorial cartoons shown side by side with the dennis panels where he reused the idea. This was one of my favorite features of Charles Schulz' L'il folks book, and im glad to see it used here as well. My only complaint is that there are a handful of pages where they just cram too many cartoons on the page. The reduction doesnt serve the artist, or the reader in any way. If it was a case of small print vs. incompleteness, im glad they did what they did. I would rather have more, than less. But in a perfect world they would all be full size.