Dennis the Menace and Black Bob in the Weekly News

From the 1966 Dennis the Menace book..which is a Weekly News Dennis the Menace not printed in the comic.

Dennis the Menace appeared in D C Thomson's magazine-cum-newspaper 'The Weekly News' for a total of 197 issues No 5134 (7/11/53) - No 5331 (17/8/57) sharing a page of the tabloid sized publication with Black Bob, Dennis having the top half of the page and the Dandy Wonder Dog having the bottom. Of the 197 strips published 184 were new efforts by regular Dennis artist Davey Law while the remaining 13 were made up of one Davey Law reprint strip from the pages of the Beano and 12 new strips by another artist. In due course 98 of the Davey Law strips were reprinted in the pages of the bi-annual Dennis the Menace books 8 in the 1962 edition, 32 in the 1964 edition, 33 in the 1966 edition and 25 in the 1970 edition. I'll get around to dating these anon.
thanks Kashgar for the info..

So there is many Dennis the Menace pages that Beano collectors have missed.


from comicsuk forum..
http://www.comicsuk.co.uk/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2575

Black Bob in Dandy comic - 1944-1955 21 text stories.
1956-1982 77 picture stories (52 original
25 reprint) All originally printed in The
Weekly News 1946-1967. Black Bob Book - 33 picture strips in total, 16 of which were later reprinted in the weekly Dandy. from Kashgar

Re the format of the Black Bob/ Dennis the Menace strips in the 'Weekly News'. They both took up half a tabloid size page and when they both appeared together between 1953-1957 they were both printed on the same page one on top of the other. When some of the Dennis strips from the 'Weekly News' were reprinted in the early Dennis the Menace books they were published exactly as they had appeared in the paper with the half-tabloid strips spread across two pages in the books. When the Black Bob strips were reprinted in the Dandy though their original format had to be changed to fit the standard Dandy page format and to do this a single illustration had to be dropped from the 'Weekly News' original each time and the remaining panels rejigged to fit the new page size. This was easier to achieve than you might at first think thanks to the fact that regular artist Jack Prout always prepared the Black Bob strip as a series of single illustrations on seperate pieces of card rather than as a strip complete on a single large page. from Kashgar.

A bit about Jack Prout...Kashgar answering my question..

Also to answer Peter's question Jack Prout joined Thomsons in 1937 and worked mainly for the women's magazines till the war when a number of artists, who were too old for active service, found themselves working in areas that they had not worked in before. In Jack Prout's case this turned out to be the juvenile publications dept where he was used on such diverse projects as completing the first picture series of 'The Shipwrecked Circus' and doing the occasional 'Big Eggo' front cover for the Beano and doing heading-block illustrations for text stories in the Dandy one of which happened to be 'Black Bob' in 1944.
As a picture strip artist he was most particularly associated with the 'Dandy' where, as well as his 'Black Bob' reprints, they published things like 'Tin Lizzie' and 'Tom-Tin and Buster Brass' to name but two. from Kashgar.

most of the Dudley Watkins adventure strips that appeared in Topper were first printed, minus the colour of course, in the Peoples Journal so you are talking about Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Oliver Twist. Kidnapped, Prester John, The Three Musketeeers etc and a large amount of the Peoples Journal run of the Wild Young Dirky strip. In fact only two items drawn by Watkins that featured in the Peoples Journal never made it into the Topper. Adaptations of the novels Geordie, which was reprinted in the girls comic Diana in 1967, and Huntingtower, which as far as I am aware has never been reprinted anywhere else. Kashgar.

http://www.comicsuk.co.uk/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1210
This link has so much good comic info on the adventure stories of The Dandy.

Wopuld be nice to see the Weekly News Black Bob in book one day...landscape...
Also many Dennis the Menace not seen by fans..

With the missing illustration..

If anyone can scan and send an example of the Weekly News paper with Black Bob and Dennis the Menace...it would be great to see and I'll make another blog post on it.
thejeep2000@yahoo.co.uk