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

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.

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!

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.