I was never much of a fan of the Dennis the Menace newspaper strip by Hank Ketcham. It was nicely drawn but there was something about its attitude towards children that struck me as needlessly condescending. At times, it was almost like Dennis was not a kid but a pet in need of better housebreaking. This attitude extended to the TV show with Jay North but only occasionally to the comic books, which are among the most overlooked of great comics. Ketcham didn't write or draw the comics (nor his strip's Sunday pages) and they were generally the work of writer Fred Toole and artist Al Wiseman. (That's Fred above with the mustache; Al's the guy in the photo at right.) The stories were very clever and some were long enough that you could make a case for them as among the first graphic novels. In an article on his weblog, Fred Hembeck explains what he loved about them. I'm not sure he's right in identifying Owen Fitzgerald as the Dennis artist whose work he once didn't like, but otherwise he pretty well summarizes my thoughts. (Hembeck is a darn good cartoonist, himself. Browse around his site and see for yourself.)