Dennis the Menace #31
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeDennis the Menace #31 (November 1958) occupies a precise hinge point in comics publishing history: it is simultaneously the final issue released under the Pines Comics banner and the debut of Joey McDonald, the freckle-faced boy who became Dennis's closest pal and a fixture of the franchise for the next two decades. The character's introduction in a backup strip — rather than the lead story — is a telling reminder of how secondary characters organically earned their way into a series before spin-off logic took over; Joey would eventually anchor his own one-shot and multiple digest reprints. The issue also marks the end of a five-year Pines run that had carried the property from Standard Comics through the mid-Silver Age, handing the baton to Hallden/Fawcett at the very moment the comic-book Ketcham universe was expanding fastest.
This issue contains two stories. "Puppetale" follows Dennis meeting a man with a hand puppet named Tommy; Dennis initially mistakes the puppet for a real child, but when the man explains it's just a doll, Dennis invites the puppeteer and his family to his house, imagining they were all puppets together. In the second story, Dennis finds a stray dog named Joey and eagerly asks his father if he can take it home; after initially refusing, his father agrees to a one-week trial period, hoping the responsibility will teach Dennis maturity, though Dennis proves his characteristic mischievous self even with the new pet in tow.
Dennis Mitchell gets a crash course in military discipline when his father Henry decides to turn playtime into an Army training exercise, complete with room inspections, K.P. duty, and guard duty—but the young menace quickly learns that soldiering involves a lot more hard work than just the fun parts. As Dennis tackles each assignment with his usual enthusiasm, the line between play and actual chores gets hilariously blurry, leading to lessons about responsibility that even he has to respect.
Dennis takes his family on a visit to the Junior Museum of Marin County, where he encounters local wildlife—and promptly causes chaos by feeding bubble gum to a deer, chasing animals, and accidentally swapping his borrowed guinea pig for a skunk. When Dennis brings his new pet home to show the Wilsons, the mayhem reaches its peak, proving once again that Dennis's good intentions and the Mitchells' patience are always tested to their limits.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
The Dennis the Menace comic-book series was created not by Hank Ketcham himself but by his studio assistants Fred Toole (scripts) and Al Wiseman (art), who had been recruited from the outset to handle the Sunday page workload and subsequently produced the vast majority of original comic-book stories for Pines Publications from 1953 onward. By the time issue #31 landed on newsstands in November 1958, publisher Ned Pines — whose Standard Comics imprint had folded — was winding down Pines Comics entirely, necessitating the transfer of the Dennis license to Hallden Publications, Inc. (a Fawcett affiliate), which picked up the numbering seamlessly with issue #32 in January 1959. The Toole-and-Wiseman creative engine continued without interruption across the publisher change, giving the early Hallden era a visual and tonal consistency with the Pines years.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover-dated November 1958; published by Pines Comics — the final issue of the Pines run of the main Dennis the Menace series (issues #15–#31, March 1956–November 1958).
- First appearance of Joey McDonald, Dennis's best friend, who debuted in a backup story rather than the lead feature; Joey would go on to appear in his own Hallden/Fawcett one-shot (Dennis the Menace and His Pal Joey, Summer 1961) and recur throughout the franchise.
- Interior stories scripted by Fred Toole and drawn by Al Wiseman — the core creative team responsible for original Dennis the Menace comic-book content throughout the Pines era.
- Also contains reprints of daily newspaper strips by Hank Ketcham himself, a standard format feature of the series that mixed original comic-book stories with strip reprints.
- Confirmed story titles in the issue include 'We're in the Army Now!' and 'A Puppetale,' both scripted by Fred Toole with art by Al Wiseman.
- Numbering continued unbroken: issue #32 (January 1959) launched the Hallden/Fawcett phase of the series, which ran all the way through issue #166 (November 1979).
- The series at this point carried the Comics Code Authority stamp, reflecting its all-ages humor positioning during the Silver Age.
- Stories and characters from this era were later collected and celebrated in Papercutz's 2015 hardcover 'The Cult-Classic Comicbooks by Al Wiseman & Fred Toole,' which drew praise from cartoonists including Art Spiegelman, Daniel Clowes, and Los Bros Hernandez.
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Reprints
Reprinted in Dennis #19/1960 (1960), Dennis #20/1960 (1960), Dennis #21/1960 (1960), Dennis #22/1960 (1960), The Best of Dennis the Menace #5 (1961), Dennis the Menace Giant #13 (1963), Dennis #20/1960, Dennis the Menace Pocket Full of Fun #31
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