I HAVE no doubt that between 1042 and 1066, the Anglo-Saxon king, Edward was defined by the epithet “confessor”; and his father Ethelred must have been blighted by being known as the “unready”. Similarly when it comes to having a reputation for “terrible”, none could best Ivan.
Had any of those three lived in this age, they would probably no longer be known as Edward the Confessor, Ethelred the Unready and Ivan the Terrible. Politically corrected, they would be known simply as Edward, Ethelred and Ivan. And soon they are to be joined by Dennis, the artist formerly known as The Menace.
Next year The Beano, the most iconic of institutions of childhood, will celebrate its eightieth year in existence. The ability of this comic book to remain relevant (albeit to varying degrees) during times of great change is quite an achievement. For the better part of my four decades I have read the comic. The Numskulls, The Bash Street Kids and Billy Whizz were constants in my childhood of change. They were ruled over by the king and queen of comics, Minnie the Minx and Dennis the Menace.
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But from 2018 onwards, modernity means that the “Menace” moniker is to be dropped, destined for the dustbin of the days of old. That’s right. Dennis will no longer have any menace. None.
The character is being rebranded. Forthwith he will be known simply as Dennis.
Publishers of the Beano, DC Thomson, say that while Dennis had “made mistakes in the past” he has now “moved away from his ‘menacing’ ways”. Mike Stirling, head of Beano Studios, denies that Dennis has been much of a menace for some time. “Today’s Dennis is a flawed hero, a 10-year-old boy who fears nothing and sometimes gets into trouble as a result.”
We are reassured that the now epithet-free anti-hero will “still dance to the beat of his own drum as a mischief-maker”. But some young fans found themselves wondering whether Dennis has been tamed as a concession to political correctness. Beano bosses have denied this. They also note that the post-menace move has no link to the launch of the new CBBC series, Dennis & Gnasher Unleashed, which will embrace difference and diversity, as is expected of a modern day, licence fee-financed channel.
The menace of Dennis was a thing of legend and mythology. His story would be the first one I searched for in my freshly bought Beano. The fundamental philosophical force of the Beano was one of anarchy. It was about the subversion of power structures and the glorification of behaviour that was morally questionable. Dennis himself led a campaign of terror against the “Softies”, a well-behaved gang of slightly effete boys led by Walter. Dressed in his red and black striped jersey (a nod perhaps to the archetypal black and white striped jumpers of comic book thieves) and armed with his deadly catapult, the Dennis of old could be construed as a modern day Asbo-magnet, a loner whose only friend is his dog Gnasher.
In his day, however, these details seemed irrelevant; he was who he was and he was the kid we all wanted to be but (in my case) were unable to realise as the child of education-focused immigrants. Viewed though the prism of contemporary life, Dennis’s menace might be described as bullying; his behaviour would have the phones at Childline ringing off the hook.
I have no doubt that, as times change in the real world, so must those fictional characters that inhabit our imagined world. And while we may not revere comic book characters in this developing age of digital downloads, one can applaud the fact that there still is a Dennis in existence, even if he is menace-free.
But I can’t help feeling some degree of irony that a cartoon character who is rude and hateful, a creator of chaos and maker of mayhem, basically a deluded bully, is being smoothed and softened to seem more relevant for 2018. We need only look across the Atlantic where it seems all that Dennis’s qualities (with the help of Russian meddling) can see you elected as the most powerful man in the world.