Johnny Achziger wrote to ASK me…
Every year when you bring up the Bill Finger awards I nominate Fred Toole and Al Wiseman from the 1950's-'60's Dennis the Menace comic. Maybe I'm the only one who does, but I think their body of work is every bit as good as Carl Barks, John Stanley or any other humor comic writers/artists ever. I can still read their stuff today and get many good laughs out of the experience. So, did you read Dennis? Did you like the comic? If so, could you do a post about them?
You are not the only person to nominate Fred Toole for the Bill Finger Award. We have a lot of folks who've received dozens of nominations for the posthumous award and I hope we keep this going long enough to get to all of them.
I was a big fan of the Dennis the Menace comic books but I'm afraid I know very little about them aside from what any reader could glean from reading them. Never met Mssrs. Toole or Wiseman. I did work with two men who did art for those comics — Owen Fitzgerald and Lee Holley — and all they had to say about them was that they were hired, they drew what they were assigned to draw and they got paid.
Hey, I'll tell you how much I liked the Dennis the Menace comic books: I collected and liked them even though I never liked anything else about Dennis the Menace. Didn't like the newspaper strip, didn't like the TV show, didn't like the way either depicted children. I even think that one of the reasons I never for a second in my life wanted to be a father is a deep-down fear that I'd have a son like that obnoxious brat. At one point, I let myself get talked into working on one of the many Dennis the Menace animated series and I didn't even like what I did on that show and got off it.
But the comic books? Great stuff. Dennis wasn't as stupidly destructive and I really thought his father was more the star of the stories even if Dennis got the most "camera time." I believe a lot of them have been reprinted lately and they're well worth seeking out.
