BillyBatson4360

Kudos, Jim. The pieces of the puzzle are starting to fall into place for us longtime Wiseman fans. From the letter that Bill Alger shared with you as well as the two articles you reprinted, I am definitely thinking that your dad made contributions to the early days of the daily strip as well as the Sunday pages. We haven't heard from Mr. Alger in a while. Hopefully, he will check back in and perhaps starting filling in some of the gaps. Joe - If you notice, there are two newspaper articles that Jim's wife transcribed for our pleasure. The first, mentioning the Christmas, Hollywood & Mexico specials came from 1959. The second lists 1968 as its date. This is the second reference to that year that we've seen. The last Dennis Giant with new art is "Way Out Stories' (# 48). Without having my copy at hand, I believe that Giant was published in 1967. So, it appears the split between Ketcham and Wiseman ocurred some time in 1967, not 1966.

What a job, Joe!!! It's unbelievable how much information you've been able to unearth in a relatively short time. I'm out of town this weekend, so I really don't have time to absorb it all, but I will upon my return home. I always liked Lee Holley's work - he's one of my favorite Ketchum assistants. As far as the total artists listing, I would love to hear more from JRW. The Dennis newspaper strip in the late 50's to early 60's so closely resembled his father's style that it wouldn't surpise me to find out his dad had a hand in it. That would also explain why Al became disguntled at not being fairly compensated for his contribution to Dennis. If AW was simply drawing the comic book, it gets a little hard to understand his feelings. But if he and Fred Toole were making significant contributions to the newspaper strip, then that would justify some of AW's feelings. It might also explain why AW left the studio he shared with Ketcham & Toole and began working from home. This is a question for Jim: is it possible that your dad was helping with the newspaper version during the years when he shared a studio with Ketcham, but became "comic books only" once he started working from home? Or did your dad specifically tell you that he never had anything to do with the newspaper strip? Interesting aside: in those early issues of Dennis (1-45), Fred Toole frequently worked gags that appeared in the newspaper strip into the comic book stories. Now I'm wondering if those were his gags to begin with and he was simply swiping from himself.

Well, I've written just about everything you could imagine (except novels). In my younger days, I wrote an original stage adaptation of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein which I also directed and occasionally starred in (I was the official understudy for the actor who played Dr. Frankenstein). It was produced professionally by a small theater in Orlando. It became that theater's second highest grosiing production (behind only "Fiddler on the Roof") and was revived at the theater twice (I did not direct the second revival). I founded a professional comedy troupe in Orlando and spent a couple of years writing and directing sketch comedy (like what you see on Saturday Nite Live). Then I went into morning radio which also required lots of comedy writing (filling 4.5 hours a day chews up a lot of material). I was a ghostwriter on the Dell book Clark's First 25 Years of Rock n' Roll. I have collaborated an an unproduced screenplay (which wasn't very good). And I written more advertising copy (which is my current "day job") than I could ever estimate. I've been doing that since I was in high school. I haven't written for the comics - although I'd love to. I was college roomates with Stephen Grant and friends with Mike Baron - both guys who've had success in the comics field. Well, enough about me, let's get back to Dennis...

Point well taken, tth2. Fred Toole was a master at taking the most mundane domestic situations and spinning them into genuinely hilarious escalating slapstick gags. The problem lies with the medium of comics in general. Good art will always carry bad scripting much farther than a good -script will carry bad art. Keep in mind, I write for a living, so my natural rooting instincts are with the writer. But comics are a visual medium. The picture comes first. Even though Fred Toole continued scripting Dennis, I never enjoyed the post-Wiseman issues at all. The art looked so sloppy, the strip lost all its charm for me. Similarly, the looser the drawing style became in the daily and Sunday strips, the less interested I became in following them. (Although one of the other problems with the newspaper strip involved turning Dennis from a cutting edge humor strip into a warm & fuzzy greeting card character.)

First of all, Jedijim, welcome! We are glad to have any and all Dennis/Wiseman fans here! Thanks for clearing up the mystery of when the newspaper strip started. If you have that VF copy of DTM # 1, I'm hoping you'll post a scan as you probably have the best existing copy! Congrats! Jon, loved the early Dennis strips. I wouldn't put too much stock in the "Class of 1966" reference as Dennis' age has been established as being perpetually between 4 and 5 years old. I remember when I started reading the books I was close to Dennis' age. Last night I told my wife that, unfortunately, I'm now much closer to Mr. Wilson's age. Mr. Alger, I really hope you favor us with some examples of Wiseman's post-Dennis work. I am completely in the dark about what he did in the latter part of his career (except for the scant bits of information I've picked up from reading this thread). It breaks my heart to think that a creator that talented finished his career away from the medium where he really excelled, but I'd still love to see the art that he produced. Also, does anyone have any examples of the Yogi Bear newspaper strip from the period when AW was drawing it? I've seen one or two examples and it would be great to have some samples posted here.

Loved the story. Ironically, Joe, I was thinking of scanning a page or two of it yesterday when I posted the shoot the chutes art! "Great minds think alike, eh?" Bill Wray, if you'd care to fill us in on why you find Wiseman "stiff." I think his stories are filled with action. Mr. Wilson's double takes in the story are classic. Now Wally Wood - there's a stiff artist. Wiseman, to me anyway, is clean and precise, but his drawings display a wonderful sense of action. His drawing style is not loose and rubbery, the way Harvey Kirtzman's is (and I love Kurtzman!), but it's a long way from stiff. Yes Joe, that was the former President Herbert Hoover, although I'm sure the title was only honorary. I doubt ol' HH ever personally preused a copy of Dennis the Menace to make sure it was wholesome enough for America's youth. As kid, I never understood why so many comics (Dell used to push a similar kind of message) went out their way to establish how good and pure they were because I never understood how recent the horror/crime comic witchhunt had been to the start of my comic reading. Those comics were not on the newsstands when I started buying, but they had only been gone for two or three years. That's also he reason why the Comics Code symbol is displayed so prominently. And kudos the JRW for sharing those insights. Now, I have to go back and dig out those issues that I just boxed up to check the references he made. I do know in the model building story, Dennis and his dad wind up with a model of the sailing ship U.S.S Constitution (again, rendered in equisite detail by the master, AW).

Jim, I thought you had tried it! After all, that same issue contains the story about putting the plastic model together and you said you and your dad did that before he drew the story.

I mentioned the interior art on issue # 34. It contains a great example of why I love Al Wiseman both as a draftsman and as visual story teller. Wiseman continually varied the size of his panels to aid in selling the joke or the concept. The bigger the gag, generally, the bigger the panel. This page comes from the lead story in issue # 34 "The Heat Is On Off On Off On Off..." The Fred Toole plot is simplicity in itself. The Mitchell's heating system has malfunctioned (it will turn out to be a stuffed teddy bear that Dennis dropped down the heating vent). They are getting an entire new system of ducts installed when Dennis, Tommy & Joey decide the ducts could be put to a better use: Man, notice how detailed and precise yet clean the drawing looks (incredible perspective drawing on the barrel and boxes). And the size of the panel perfectly "sells" the gag. By the way, the coaster at the bottom of the chute provides the big pay-off to the whole sequence on the next page when Dennis, Tommy and Joey go crashing through a basement window sending Henry and the duct installer sprawling!

As you may have noticed I am in the ironic position of actually having better grade copies (with a couple of exceptions) within the first 20 issues of the title than I do between # 21 and # 36. From # 37 to the end of Wiseman's run, conditions on the books in my collection improve again, but the best condition copies are really those early issues.

And finally, issue # 36 which also contains the illustration I use as my avatar:

Issue # 35:

Issue # 34 (more on some art from inside this issue in a moment):

Issue # 33: Always liked this gag for some reasons.

Moving along to issue # 32:

Issue # 31: This is a particular favorite as it was the very first issue of Dennis the Menace that I ever purchased. (Obviously, this is not my original copy. That has long since returned to the dust from whence it came!)

Here's Issue # 29:

My favorite issues of Dennis are a brief run of issues between #23 & 36. These are my favorites because: A.) This was about the time I started reading Dennis off the newsstand as a kid. B.) I loved the covers that simulate the look of the Dennis newspaper strip. The first time they tried the layout, was issue # 23. Then, it was used again on issues # 25, 28, 29, and every issue from 31 thru 36. Then, it was abandoned and never used again. Joe has already posted the covers to # 23 & # 25, so I thought I would pick up with # 28:

Once again, kudos on the research, Joe. I'm curious about the circulation figures. Am I correct in presuming they are for the Dennis the Menace Bonus Magazine Series? I don't recall ever seeing any circulation statements in the earlier Dennis the Menace Giant Series. And I would presume those had higher press runs as comic book circulations (especially among non-super-hero books) declined from the mid-50's to the early 70's. Also many magazine circularion statements contain two sets of figures - average numer of copies and actual number of copies of single issue closest to filing date. If there is only one set of numbers, then I am presuming that represents "average" number of copies. Obviously, individual titles could have sold more or less. But with nine or ten printings, it's getting pretty hard to overlook Dennis in Hawaii as the all-time sales champ.

I'm also wondering if Bill A. or Bill W. could fill in more details about the reasons behind Al Wiseman's departure from Dennis. Jim indicated that his father seemed unhappy with his page rate and that the end of the relationship left him somewhat bitter about Hank Ketcham, but he didn't really have any specifics. Could either of you gentlemen paint a more complete picture? This is a question that has puzzled me for decades.

Interesting. It must have been a lot of printing plates because there are a lot of I-W/Super comics. Anyway, as promised, here's a page from Clubhouse Rascals # 2. If you followed Jim's link, you've already seen the cover. Ironically, that cover features Dan DeCarlo's "The Brain" in a far more prominent position that the Clubhouse Rascals (and the Brain was just that magazine's back-up feature). Apparently, the editors had already figured out that the Brain was a better feature. In his own comic, where the Clubhouse Rascals were the back-up, the Brain ran far longer than the Rascals (7 issues to 2) and never had to share a cover with his back-up As you can see the art looks vaguely like Wiseman, but really isn't anywhere near as good. The page layout is pedestrian. None of the Rascals stories even used splash pages. They all feature first page layouts pretty much like this one. Oh - and Fred Toole's scripts were light years ahead of this stuff!

Jim, how did you see some similarities when no artwork from Clubhouse Rascals has been posted here yet? I hope to post some tonight.

Man, I'm am learning stuff on a daily basis. I always thought the art in Clubhouse Rascals reminded me of Wiseman's work. Now I understand the connection.

Yes, I am not only familiar with those Rascals, I have two issues of their comic. In general the Clubhouse Rascals were older than Dennis. They featured a multi-ethnic (but stereotypical) cast and seemed to have more in common with the Little Rascals and Little Lulu comics (especially the ones that dealt with Tubby's boys club) than Dennis. I actually have a weaknesses for any comics (like the aforementioned Clubhouse Rascals) that were later reprinted by the I-W/Super outfit in the early 60's. For those not familiar with these comics. In the early sixties, an outfit alternately known as either I-W or Super (same company, tho') got the rights to reprint several defunct comic books from several publishers, including Timely's line of funny animal comics, Super Brat from Toby Press, The Brain (another great unsung strip by Dan DeCarlo), and various titles from Magazine Enterprises (M-E). They also reprinted super-hero material from Quality Comics including Jack Cole's Plastic Man, Doll Man, and Will Eisner's The Spirit. What made these comics unique was their manner of distribution. While all the books contained a ten cent cover price, they were not sold individually. Instead they were bagged in groups of 3-5-7-9 comics, etc. and then sold at a greater discount than if they were purchased individually. For example, if it was a bag of 5 titles, that might go for 35 or 40 cents. My memory is very hazy about the pricing structure, but I remember that you had several different sizes of comic lots to choose from. They were sold at what used to be called five-and-dime stores. I owned quite a few of these as a kid as you got a lot more bang for your buck buying in bulk. As an adult, I began to reassemble my collection back when you could fish these out of any dealer's bargain box at pennies on the dollar. In the last few years they have finally started to appreciate in value - especially as artists like DeCarlo have begun to get recognition. [Whew! Pretty long-winded way to say, "Yes, I've heard of the Clubhouse Rascals."]

Big welcome to Mr. Wray! Longtime admirer of your work. I think I understand what you're saying about Wiseman's work vs. Ketcham's, but I also never found Al's work "stiff." While he clearly loved straight lines and sharp angles, his faces and body postures always seem full of action to me. There is also something friendly and inviting about the world of Dennis as he drew it. As I stated, my favorite period for the Ketcham strip is the period when Ketcham's and Wiseman's styles are similar. Bill A. - Good catch on Dennis Giant # 48. I had it listed in my own index as "some Wiseman" but hadn't had time to really check it since Joe made his index. The cover defintiely looks like Wiseman. Joe - Awesome job!!! From a standing start we now have a comprehensive index to the first 100 issues of Dennis Giants! Onward!

Forget "hidden Mickeys." Thanks to Jim we can now scan old DTM issues loking for hidden Wisemans. Here's the one Jim mentioned from the final page of Dennis Christmas Giant # 5 (the main image is the frequently repeated one of Dennis sitting atop a mountain of toys exclaiming, "Is that all?") Jim identified the man in the picture frame as a sly self-portrait from Al.