Dennis the Menaces menaces more – and this new screenprint (on sale at this website) goes on show at my exhibition in central London next week.
I have printed my Dennis the Menace menacing screenprint in my medium format (48cms x 38cms). The image of Britain’s comic icon was a title piece in a copy of The Beano from the early 1960s – it has previously only been available in my standard format (26cms x 19cms).
There is something raw about his image – Dennis the Menace is on the prowl and looks as if he means business.
Dennis the Menace, the star of The Beano comic, first appeared in 1951. He has since become a kind of national mascot – what Asterix is to France, or Oor Wullie is to Scotland.
One glimpse of his red-and-white jersey – actually a football top, his knobbly knees or his unruly hair immediately brings the lovable scamp to mind.
Dennis the Menace has gone through various phases since then, from the pocket-sized Satan of the 1950s, to the pugnatious youth of the 1960s and 1970s to the incorrigible imp of the 1990s.
In the early 1960s, he was joined by his Abyssinian wire-haired tripe house, Gnasher. Gnasher seems to be made of the same kind of thing as Dennis the Menace’s hair – the untamed explosion of black hair symbolic of the chaos they embody.
He is a gift to the screenprinter, from a graphic point of view, with his red-and-white sriped jersey and explosion of black hair.
Standard size: 25cm x 19cm.
Medium size: 48cms x 38cms.
Handmade, limited edition screen print on mould-made, cotton paper.
Signed and numbered out of 200 in pencil by the printer, John Patrick Reynolds
© D.C. Thomson & Co., Ltd.
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