The Three Generations Of Dennis The Menace

This article will examine how in-storyworld explanations of updates to the appearance of the long running British comics character Dennis The Menace were expanded upon by creators to significantly retrospectively alter the character's history, developing an ingenious multi-generational explanation for historical changes to the character over time that echo similar explanations found in long-running American series. These 'retcons' are assessed by using a unified catalogue of character components to discern whether there is any evidence in the original texts to support the idea of there being different versions of the same character, before describing social and practical reasons for the results found.