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The Eternal Five Year Old is 75

Published: March 12, 2026 1 minute 7 comments

Dennis the Menace celebrates its 75th anniversary today, first appearing on March 12, 1951.

Success was virtually instantaneous.

Dennis the Menace – March 12, 2026

Created by Hank Ketcham the daily panel was so successful that the syndicate added a Sunday page less than a year after the daily panel’s debut. Ketcham continued the daily panel, others did the Sunday strips.

Dennis the Menace by Fred Toole and Al Wiseman – first Sunday January 13, 1952

Later in 1952 Dennis the Menace began being published in hardcover and paperback books.

In 1953 Dennis the Menace began a long run as a comic book series.

Dennis the Menace comic books #1-4, 1953-54

Dennis the Menace mass market paperbacks partial gallery

By the mid 1950s Fawcett was the publisher of the mass market paperbacks, and by 1959 the comic books. The comic books would run to 1979 (and again 1981-82), the paperbacks until 1983.

Oh, there was also a television series of some note that aired 1959-63 and in reruns ever since.

Dennis the Menace the comic panel and strip would eventually appear in over 1,000 newspapers and continues to be one of the top circulated newspaper comics.

It is currently produced by Hank Ketcham’s son Scott Ketcham (editor, writer, Sunday inker), Marcus Hamilton (daily artist), and Ron Ferdinand (Sunday and daily artist).

This week Dennis the Menace is rerunning classic panels (other than today’s anniversary special):

March 9, 2026 is from March 12, 1952

March 10, 2026 is from March 12, 1953

March 11, 2026 is from March 13, 1955

March 12 2026 is the new anniversary celebration

March 13, 2026 is from March 12, 1957

March 14, 2026 is from March 12, 1958

Dennis the Menace by Hank Ketcham debuts on March 12, 1951

The next Diamond Anniversaries will be Hi and Lois and Marmaduke in 1954.

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Comments 7

  1. Hank Ketchum was a first-rate ass. He abandoned his wife and kid (Dennis was a real person), who went on to lead miserable lives (the real Alice became a drug addict and died of an overdose), and basically lived off their images for the rest of his life.

    He married his second wife within weeks of his first wife’s death, but she divorced him in 1969. Apparently, his third wife mellowed him out. I wonder if Dennis and his half-siblings are even in contact with each other, and if Dennis Ketchum gets any money from the strip.

    1. News reports of the time said Alice Ketcham died of a brain hemorrhage while motoring to Washington state with friends.

      1. The “hemorrhage” was probably a cover story, typical for that era (she died in 1959). Information about the drug overdose was revealed in Ketcham‘s obituary in the New York Times (in 2001).

      2. The NYTimes obit doesn’t give a source for the Alice as addict story. “Some say” (the author of Pocket Full of Dennis) it was a fiction created by Hank Kecham to cover his @$$ for his own abysmal treatment of his first family (anyone got Ketcham’s Merchant of Dennis autobiography?).

  2. I wish there was a new Dennis the Menace comic book series, maybe BOOM! Studios (A new Baby Garfield comic book series based on the Garfield comic strip gets released this month in March 2026) or IDW could get rights for a new Dennis the Menace comic book?

  3. There was also a couple of animated TV shows, one of which featured Phil Hartman doing the voices of Mr. Wilson and Henry Mitchell. There were a couple of live-action movies as well with such actors as Walter Matthau playing Mr. Wilson. Does anyone remember those shows?

    1. I remember the TV cartoon fondly—it used to be on after school when I was a kid, along with Ducktales and Rescue Rangers and all the other good stuff. The movie with Walter Matthau is less fondly remembered.

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