SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Hank Ketcham, whose lovable scamp “Dennis the Menace” tormented cranky Mr. Wilson and amused readers of comics for five decades, has died at age 81. Ketcham, who died at his home in Pebble Beach, had suffered from heart disease and cancer, said his publicist, Linda Dozoretz. Ketcham stopped drawing the weekday strip at the end of 1994 but let it continue under a team of artists and writers.
Inspired by the antics of his 4-year-old son, Ketcham began the strip in 1951. Despite its longevity, the strip changed little since the 1950s. Dennis was always a freckle-faced “five-ana-half” – an appealing if aggravating mixture of impishness and innocence. “Mischief just seems to follow wherever Dennis appears, but it is the product of good intentions, misdirected helpfulness, good-hearted generosity, and, possibly, an overactive thyroid,” Ketcham wrote in his 1990 autobiography, “The Merchant of Dennis The Menace.”
Henry King Ketcham was born March 14, 1920, in Seattle and grew up there. He recalled he was no more than 6 when he knew he wanted to be a cartoonist. One day he watched a family friend sketch Barney Google and other then-popular cartoon figures. In 1938, he dropped out of the University of Washington after his freshman year and went to Southern California to work as an animator, first for Walter Lantz, creator of “Woody Woodpecker,” and then for Walt Disney. Ketcham worked on “Pinocchio,” “Bambi,” “Fantasia” and Donald Duck shorts. A free-lance cartoonist after the war, Ketcham was living in Carmel when he got the idea for “Dennis the Menace” in October 1950. His wife, Alice, burst into his home studio, exasperated that their 4-year-old son, Dennis, had dismantled his room instead of taking a nap. “Your son is a menace!” she said.
Oh, no…you don’t think they’ll start syndicating “Classic Dennis the Menace” now, do you? Dennis unplugs Mister Wilson’s iron lung! Dennis lodges his coonskin cap in the bathtub drain! Dennis misplaces Mrs. Mitchell’s Thalydomide! Dennis assassinates President Kennedy!
[AP] — " . . . Ketcham stopped drawing Sunday panels in the mid-1980s and retired from weekday sketches in 1994. Ketcham’s assistants handled the bulk of the work after that, with Ketcham overseeing the feature daily by fax. The team Marcus Hamilton and Ronald Ferdinand, WILL CONTINUE THE PANELS."
Now if we can only find a way to end The Family Circus. I’m dying to see Mom and Dad from that piece of crap strip at a swinger’s convention. Throw in the kids on crack (can’t you just see one of them wandering around whatever passes for the slums in their town looking for a fix, with the little dashes showing all the places they’ve been - in the sewer, in the shooting gallery, in the nip joint, in the XXX movie theater)and Grandpa finally revealing that he isn’t an angel at all but instead is burning in Hell for molesting all the kids and I think we’ve go the makings for a first rate panel cartoon.
I’ve always wanted to bang the mother in that strip.
<unhijack>
Even though he had given up the duties of the strip years ago, I’ll give props to ol’ Hank. He was one of the last of a dying breed; a cartoonist who could draw.
Well, according to Reuters as reported on http://www.bayarea.com/rc/life/docs/08889791.htm, ol’ Hank’s home was in Carmel and not in Pebble Beach. For those who don’t know, Carmel by the Sea (the official name of Carmel) is a city and Pebble Beach is in the unincorporated area of Monterey County between the cities of Carmel, Pacific Grove, and Monterey.
Hank Ketcham also donated the land for Momterey’s “Dennis the Menace” Park on the shore of Lake El Estero. I’ll report tomorrow on what, if anything, Monterey does at that park to commemorate his passing.
