Three Generations Of Dennis The Menace: How Gok Wan created a new storyworld superpower

The UK comics character Dennis The Menace has appeared in The Beano every week since 1951. For most of this time he existed in an 'oneric climate' with little reference to previous events or to the passage of time, but this began to change in 2012 when Dennis's dad was given a modern 'makeover' by TV celebrity Gok Wan.

Three years later this change was used to 'retcon' the strip's continuity, with 'Dennis Senior' revealed to be the grown-up Dennis from the 1980s, with his own father a similarly grown-up version of the original character from the 1950s.

This paper will examine the implications of this 'retcon' through an empirical analysis of a selection of texts across the character's history. It will show that the three "different" versions of the character really are distinct from each other, even though this was never made explicit at the time. It will then use the personality traits displayed by each 'generation' of Dennis and the terms used to describe them by other characters to illustrate not only how the character developed, but also how societal attitudes in Britain towards children and childhood changed over time.

Finally it will argue that, although characters have always been able to interact with each other within 'Beanotown', this development of an acknowledged continuity, turns it into a modern cohesive storyworld with a depth and history to rival that of Marvel and DC.