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Born in 1920, Ketcham learned his craft in the animation studios of Walter Lantz and Walt Disney before serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II.
His experience at the Mouse Factory was invaluable. In later years, when asked where he went to school, Ketcham invariably replied: "The University of Walt Disney."
There he learned his craft, its art and its science—how articles of clothing stretch and drag as the body moves, the importance of balance and weight transfer, the significance of "the line of action" (the power that fuels movement)—and about acting, which is what a cartoonist must direct all his characters to do.
As a Navy photographic specialist stationed in Washington, D.C. where he drew cartoons to sell war bonds, Ketcham worked an 8-hour day, which left evenings free for freelancing gag cartoons to civilian magazines. By the end of the War, he was doing a weekly pantomime cartoon about a diminutive sailor called Half Hitchin the Saturday Evening Post. After the War, Ketcham joined the ranks of cartoonists making the rounds every Wednesday to show their week’s work to magazine cartoon editors at the New York officesClick Image to Enlarge.
In the process, Ketcham’s education continued. One of those from whom he learned was New Yorker cartoonist Perry Barlow—the only other cartoonist living in Westport, Connecticut, when Ketcham moved there after the War. Commenting on one of Ketcham’s cartoons, Barlow pointed out a couple of minor graphic details that, if added to the drawing, would improve the illusion of reality while imparting also an engaging element of charm.
The cartoon showed a farmer going down the road in his horse-drawn wagon. Barlow said: "Farm wagons generally have a lantern swinging from the undercarriage. And in most cases the farmer’s dog will be loping behind."
Ketcham appreciated the criticism: "I was impressed with his insight," he wrote in his autobiography, "and from that moment on was more sensitive and aware of details that might enhance the art."
It was a significant moment in the evolution of Ketcham’s style: as anyone who has studied his work knows, his drawings are distinguished by a profusion of telling details, tiny snippets of visual reality that seem to have been tossed casually into the composition but which are actually carefully selected and strategically placed in order to add to the sense of time and place and actuality that Ketcham strives for in his panel cartoons.
pre-Menace cartoons from the Merchant of Dennis, Hank Ketcham
Like many young cartoonists of his era, Ketcham spent much of WWII drawing. As a Navy man, he created food conservation and "Jap-bashing" posters during the day, and at night, he moonlighted as a magazine gag cartoonist producing primarily war-themed gag cartoons, including the regular feature "Half Hitch" for the Saturday Evening Post . At the end of his tour, he turned down a chance to return to a guaranteed job at Disney. As it turned out, the siren song of magazine cartooning, which at the time was considered one of the pinnacles of the applied arts, proved just too strong. For the next five years, he was a regular contributor to True, Colliers , and the Saturday Evening Post . On the rare occasion, he even made it into The New Yorker , whose ranks at the time included Peter Arno, James Thurber, and Charles Addams.
Once he began selling regularly to the major magazines, Ketcham left Connecticut and settled in Carmel, California. It was there in the fall of 1950 that his wife, reporting to him in his bedroom studio, explained the commotion he’d just heard by saying, "Your son is a menace." To which Ketcham muttered, "Dennis? A menace?" The euphony proved irresistible—to the cartoonist, to a syndicate, and to newspaper editors around the country.
Ketcham rounded up a dozen little kid gags and sent them off to his agent and within a month, he had a syndicate contract to produce Dennis the Menace. It debuted March 12, 1951, and before the end of the year, over a hundred newspapers had signed up.
It was undoubtedly the rhyming name that cracked the legendary industry resistance to panels about little kids. Ketcham had earlier experimented with a kid comic strip dubbed Little Joe; it hadn’t sold. But "Dennis the menace" sang like a national anthem.
Preview All Pieces On This Page
Click the title below to view the artwork.
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KETCHAM - Dennis the Menace Sunday 1983
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Please Inquire
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KETCHAM, DENNIS - Dennis the Menance 1958 daily - Water hose
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$For Sale
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KETCHAM, HANK - Daily panel (NON-Dennis)
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$Trade
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KETCHAM, HANK - Dennis Menace Sunday 2/15 1976, Dennis, Gina Ruff & crew in Great Winter "Buzzard"
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$For Sale
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KETCHAM, HANK - Dennis the Menace daily, Dennis in messy room with mom 12/7 1955
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$For Sale
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KETCHAM, HANK - Dennis the Menace Sunday 3/27 1960, Dennis asks sailor making out with girlfriend about Yo-Yo contest
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$For Sale
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KETCHAM, HANK - Dennis the Menace Sunday 5/29 1977, Dennis with Gina
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$Sale or Trade email to VALNSTEVEZ at AOL
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KETCHAM, HANK - Dennis the Menace, sunday 2-14-88
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$Sale or Trade
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KETCHAM, HANK - Half Hitch cartoon, Saturday Evening Post, Navy humor 1943
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$For Sale
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KETCHAM, HANK - Half Hitch daily 12-17 1973
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$Email for price
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KETCHAM, HANK - Half Hitch daily 5-2 1975, fighting over worm
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$For Sale
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KETCHAM, HANK - Half Hitch Sunday 1970
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Please Inquire
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KETCHAM, HANK Poopsy daily 5-21-75
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$Sale
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KETCHAM, HANK:Dennis the Menace Sunday 2-21-88
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$0
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KETCHAM, HANK; Dennis the Menace Sunday 12-1-74
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$0
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