Cartoon Three Eight Three
Dennis
The label reads BOB DYLAN COMICS. We’re in a living room decorated with balloons, streamers, and a banner reading HAPPY BIRTHDAY, QUINN THE ESKIMO! Bob Dylan crouches behind the couch with some other partygoers. One of them asks him: “But what’ll we do if he doesn’t get here?”
Does everyone know the lyrics to “The Mighty Quinn?” Is that still a popular song?
I had a Eureka moment the other day in regard to Dennis the Menace:
I had a big stack of Dennis compilations as a kid. One of the defining character traits of early Dennis (that’s since been forgotten) was his fondness for ketchup, which he put on everything.
The weird thing was that the comic spelled ketchup “catsup,” which is a spelling that is almost wholly vestigial these days, and was definitely very secondary even fifty years ago. Young me always wondered, “Why do they spell it like that?”
Yesterday it hit me: Dennis’s creator, Hank Ketcham, probably hated how much his name was like ketchup. I bet he was teased for it as a kid. So of course he would use the catsup spelling. He might’ve even hoped it would catch on.
Come back next week for more valuable insight. I might be here. Draw.