Dennis joined by new menace! Dennis the Menace, the popular and naughty cartoon schoolboy, will now have a black girl “Angel Face” as a sidekick who can match him for mischief.
He has been terrorising neighbours with stink bombs and catapults for 62 years, now Dennis will get a sidekick inappropriately named Angel Face, who will star alongside the spiky-haired boy in a forthcoming 52-episode television adaptation.
Mike Stirling, editor-in-chief of The Beano, which has been publishing Dennis’s adventures since 1951, said the new character would appeal to girls, who make up more than a third of the comic’s readers.
“We wanted to have a powerful female figure who shows that girls are every bit as badly behaved as boys,” he was quoted by the Times as saying.
“Dennis and Angel Face sometimes team up and cause mega-mischief. Unlike Dennis, Angel Face manages to get away with things because she flutters her eyelashes and is the headmaster’s daughter,” Stirling said.
In the 1980s cartoonists toned down Dennis’s misbehaviour and his bullying of Walter the Softy, his arch-enemy.
But in the new series he will use modern gadgets and computer technology — as well as traditional water pistols and peashooters — to restore his former image.
“We got a lot of feedback which said Dennis should get back to his roots and be a lot more of a menace,” said Stirling.
Gnasher, the Abyssinian wire-haired tripe hound found by Dennis in 1968, will also appear.
Dennis, whose voice will be provided by Chris Johnson, the CBBC presenter, has previously had mainly male friends, including those in his band, the Dinmakers. Stirling insisted there would be no romance between him and Angel Face.