A constant of mine is comics, a thing that started as a young boy that continues as that older person but still a child on the inside me even today.
The year had began when it was announced at the age of 89, David Sutherland, the Beano artist was given an award of an O.B.E. in this years New Year's Honours a period of transition for all of us following the late Queen's death last year and the start of the reign of our King, Charles III.
It was announced in the early hours of last Friday that David had died.
His career started in 1959 with being a freelance contributor to The Beano and as we got to the end of the 1960's he'd moved more into illustrating some of that comics most iconic characters, Dennis The Menace, the Bash Street Kids and Biffo the Bear.
Annuals were and still are a big thing when you are a child so many of us had Beano annuals of which this is an original of mine from Christmas 1974 that shows the Bash Street Kids and Dennis we fondly remember the way he draw them.
It was big news in September 1974, the start of my last term at Juniors that Dennis had made the Beano's front page taking over from Biffo The Bear who were part of a fictional world we loved as boys.
Impulsive, cheeky, always menacing, having a good run of luck before being caught out and like so many of us back then spanked, David's depiction of Dennis' life was the fictional counterpart to our own so to us these drawings are "our" Dennis, our Bash Street Kids with Toots complete with teacher's cane and so on in a way that to today's children the current versions are theirs set in their world.
The Bash Street Kids in the 1950's and Today.
His Dennis ran from 1970 to 1998, over a thousand episodes and a few generations seeing changes in society, space exploration and more interest in ecology.
That world the current generation live in is simply something we could never of envisioned.
On a tribute The Beano had this to say:
"‘David viewed himself as a resident of Beanotown, living alongside our characters that he loved and he will live on there forever, and always be in the hearts of Team Beano and the millions of kids who have enjoyed his strips every week.’ "
All this eternal child can say regarding his contribution to Dennis, another is thank you for the funny stories told and drawn so well that added fun to our lives whatever may of been going on at the time.
R.I.P David.P.s 1967 was officially a Groovy year but so much of this annual would be familiar to those of us who grew up in the 1970's cos the World of the Child was largely the same.
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