tth2

By the way, Tim, I am very impressed to see a correct spelling of the word "occurrence" in front of me. My experience is that virtually no one can spell it.

Ever the school teacher, Joe! Do I get a gold star? Spelling has always been one of those things that has come easily to me. Of course, I was taken to task recently by another board member for misspelling "dilemma" (I spelled it "dilemna", which apparently is incorrect even though commonly used, including by the media ).

Great cover, Matt.

I remember well a conversation I had with a WWII vet, complaining about the devaluation of medals that started in Vietnam and has continued to this day: "A Bronze Star used to mean something, you had to do something outstanding to win one! I swear they started handing them out in Vietnam for making your bed everyday, every damn officer that did a tour of duty there got one, whether they were worth a damn or not. You know what a medal that everyone has is worth? Not a whole damn lot!"

WELCOME TO THE BOARDS! The number of Dennis afficionados grows on a seemingly daily basis. Anything you'd like to contribute would be welcome. In particular I'd LOVE to see some original art. What do you have, original Ketcham comic strip art, Al Wiseman comic art ? Whatever, put it on up, we'd love to see it!

You sound surprised. If this was mistakenly sent to you, forward it to me. I'll pay the postage!

You don't get unsolicited books mailed to you by dealers all the time too?

Not surprised, just guilty because I didn't make my own scan. I WAS pleasantly surprised by how sharp this book was, absolutely immaculate except the book must have taken a minor hit at the top of the spine at some point in its life, otherwise without a doubt a solid 9.6.

This is kind of cheating, but this just arrived in the mail today and using MH's scan saves me the trouble of scanning myself.

Very cool, so in addition to Fred Hembeck we can now count Scott Shaw and the Hernandez Brothers as fans of DTM, and Scott Shaw and Fred Hembeck in particular as fans of Al Wiseman! So it's not such an isolated occurrence after all, it's just been the need to tie all these separate expressions of appreciation into one centralized location!

Hey, Tim!

Haven't seen you in here for a while. Any luck getting some Dennis books yet? And no, that is not sarcasm! Just wondering if you've had any luck. I have uncovered some duplicates that I will pm you about if you're interested.

Hey Joe, we got a 4-day weekend for Easter here, and I've been trying to stay off the internet (including these boards) on weekends and holidays to spend more time with the family.

No luck on picking up some Dennises, but to be honest I haven't really been trying. The problem with living overseas is that the mailing costs for reader copies makes reader copies not so cheap. Plus, storage space is always at a premium here. It's a very frustrating feeling, seeing you and Billy doing all the heavy lifting and not being able to contribute at all because I don't have any issues here (anyways, whatever I'd have access to wouldn't hold a candle to what you guys have put up, or your all-encompassing knowledge of the subject matter ).

I've been thinking if I go back to the US for vacation anytime soon, I'd pick up some of the Dennis digests that are at my sister's place in NJ (lots of Wiseman-Toole Christmas reprints), along with the comic reprints of some of the travel issues, and bring them back here so I can introduce them to my daughter. Unfortunately, doesn't look like we'll be coming back to the US in 2005.

Anyways, notwithstanding what I've just said, please do PM me with what you've got, maybe we can work something out.

Fantastic Jimmy Olsens! Those early issues are about as tough to find as any title!

And in a very ususual attempt to promote better sales of the puppets, issues # 31 and # 32 also featured "Puppet Tales" - very strange little Dennis stories where the characters are drawn (and move) like hand puppets. Notice the expressions on the puppets do not change from panel to panel:

Billy, thanks for posting the story. I have to admit I find Puppet Tales unnerving, between the lack of hands and the same expressions in each panel.

Okay, the index project has begun!

I have sat for several hours with my collection and have gone through the first 25 Dennis Giants, page by page, twice each. I double-checked each bit of information on each page, and I own each issue, so there is no second-hand information. Bill, thanks for the list and starting us off. When this is completed, we'll have a complete index of the Giant series, then we can move on to the regular series, etc. This may be too much information for most people, but I've been wanting to do it for myself anyway for a while.

Joe

Kudos to Greggy, I just received the book that I purchased in early February. So I can confirm he is NOT a scam artist, there is no need to panic just because a book does not show up within a month, it's bound to show up within 2!

Pay for air and it comes in 7 days. Cheap mofo!

YOU pay for air and it comes in 7 days. Cheap mofo seller!

Kudos to Greggy, I just received the book that I purchased in early February. So I can confirm he is NOT a scam artist, there is no need to panic just because a book does not show up within a month, it's bound to show up within 2!

Thanks for the list Billy! Gives me some good reference points as I go searching.

I'm amazed to see that Gina appeared so early. I had always assumed she was a 70s character introduced to add a little multi-ethnic flavor. Also interesting that Joey doesn't make an appearance until #31. I take it Mr. and Mrs. Wilson are there from the very beginning?

Some of my upcoming posts will be about the contents of the early Dennis issues and I'm thinking of posting the next 25 issues of the regular series. Thoughts?

In some ways, I think posting interior artwork is the next step and it has already begun. I would love to do that but don't know how to do it without destroying the comic! I have reading copies of all the early issues so would like to start with them, in order. Thoughts???

At the risk of sounding like an unabashed fanboy,

I think the only way to show interior art from higher grade books would be to use a digital camera, because flattening them to put on a scanner bed would damage the books.

I'll ditto that, it's not often these early Detectives get displayed!

Now just a quick post of some Wiseman art. This is the first page of the first story to feature Margaret in the comic book. What's interesting is that her hair was colored blond. I have no idea if this was a printer's error or if they later decided to make her a redhead (leaving Dennis the only blond kid in the strip).

 

By the way, this is from Dennis the Menace # 22.

Wow, this thread exploded over the weekend! Joe, thanks for the great posts, the breadth of your collection is phenomenal. You are a true DTM completist. And thanks for your great posts, BB! The consistent miswraps on your books is really interesting, it's almost as if the miswrapped books went month after month to the store where your OO was buying his books (or he was into miswrapped books ), because Joe's books from the same issues don't seem to have the miswrap.

And thanks for breaking out the page showing Margaret's first appearance in the comic. I wonder if you and Joe could put together a list of key DTMs?

Wow, the number of covers exploded over the weekend. Thanks in particular to FT88 for sharing many of his fabulous covers!

that's a beautiful book.

No kidding! I wonder who owns that beauty now?

Just shows you great minds think alike. Tell Roy to check out these boards and some of Adam's posts! How old is Roy Thomas now, 60 or so?

That's a beauty, Hans!

I can't seem to find any of the old lift and scan scanners, let alone a legal size one. All the scanners here seem to be the type for feeding documents. I can probably find something if I look harder, but I haven't felt like looking harder.

Still no new scanner but at least now I can show some of my bigger saved files. Don't know why it took me so long to sign up with photobucket, I'm just a combination of stupidity and laziness sometimes!

Photobucket rules! Just opened an account, and can now load up some of my scans which are too big to meet the 150kb limit here but which I've been too lazy to resize.

Here's a SA duck. Sorry about the overt display of the label at the expense of showing the full cover, the scan was made for, er, commercial purposes (although in fact I still own it).

Wow, nice books, Acme!

Question: how is the art inside the books? Flessel only did the covers, correct? Isn't one of the criticisms of a lot of GA, particularly the smaller publishers, that they engaged in bait and switch by commissioning gorgeous covers by truly talented artists and then filling the insides with horrible cut-rate art?

Until I can get more scans, I'd like to hear some opinions on what your favorite Dennis stories are or what you think was the single best Dennis Giant.

The travel stories, all of them! My favorite is probably Mexico, and then after that in descending order Hawaii, Hollywood and Washington DC. Am I missing any one?