Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace, 1961-1962

Dennis vaults into the 1960s with his anarchic spirit still intact. For those unfamiliar with the newspaper strip, these books are a series of unrelated one-panel gags (with the exception of one week-long story involving Dennis's mild-mannered grandpa), but what gags! Hank Ketcham is legendary for being one of the most exquisitely skilled cartoonists of all time, and each and every black-and-white panel is a small masterpiece of design and draftsmanship. Dennis the Menace 1961-1962 features Dennis's long-suffering parents, the Wilsons, his dog Ruff, his best pal Joey, his nemesis Margaret, and a seemingly endless parade of babysitters, as well as hapless shopowners, policemen, teachers, and family friends, all of whom come to realize that it's Dennis's world... they just live in it! Ketcham drew Dennis the Menace from 1951 to 1994, when he retired and let his assistant take over the strip. The sixth volume of Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace publishes every single panel strip from 1959 and 1962 in one handsome brick of a hardcover. This book rests as easily on a grandfather's shelf as a granddaughter's, but it especially recaptures the rambunctious youth of the baby-boomer generation.