Today is the 75th birthday of Dennis the Menace -- that kid in the striped shirt, armed with a slingshot, causing problems for pretty much everyone in the neighborhood, sometimes with his dog as an accomplice. Of course, depending on whether you're reading this in the US or in the UK, you've likely got very different characters in your head at the moment.

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you probably already know that both Hank Ketcham and David Law independently thought up ideas for a character called "Dennis the Menace" -- the rhyming name scheme is relatively obvious -- and, by a wild coincidence, both happened to first see print on the exact same day: March 12, 1951. Despite my deliberate attempt above to frame the characters as virtually identical, they really only share the most superficial elements. Thematically, they come from very different places -- the US version celebrates the wonder and innocence of children who haven't yet learned social conventions and mores, while the UK version shows what happens when a child knows but actively rejects those now learned social conventions and mores. The US Dennis annoys people because his ignorance of ettiquite means he winds up innocently doing and saying things people don't like. He has a lack of empathy because he hasn't learned it yet. The UK Dennis annoys people because he's specifically trying to cause chaos, mostly to alleviate his own boredom in day-to-day routine. His lack of empathy isn't because he hasn't learned it, but because he actively chooses his own immediate interests over others' regardless of the consequences.

What I find particularly fascinating about the coincidence of two characters named Dennis the Menace appearing on the same day on opposite sides of the Atlantic is how they've both been about equally successful in their respective countries of origin. It would be an interesting coincidence if both characters debuted simultaneously, but either one or both was nothing more than a brief splash of interest, falling out of print after a year or two. For as many comics do last a short time like that, nobody would bat an eye and it probably wouldn't be until decades later that some comic archivist happened across the coincidence. But instead both characters have been not only successful to have remained continually in print for 75 years, but they've both been the subject of multiple TV shows and movies, video games, and the like. The UK Dennis was a theme park mascot for a little over a decade, while the US Dennis has had two playgrounds built around him. They've shown up on clothes and lunchboxes and coffee mugs. They've had dolls and figures made of them. Fans have cosplayed as them.

Their successes haven't been precisely parallel, and I'm sure you could quantify which was more "successful" (i.e. which has made more money over time) but that they're both close enough to be commonly understood in the same ballpark is almost as amazing as their debuting on the same day.

The characters will no doubt to continue to evolve over time. Both Ketcham and Law passed away decades ago now, and the characters have had a number of artists and writers working on them since, obviously bringing their own preferences and biases to the table in the process. But that both characters have survived at all with so few (relatively speaking) changes would be really nothing short of astounding even if they had a full year between them.

Happy birthday, Dennis! And happy birthday, Dennis!

The founder of the popular event Comic Con India, Jatin Varma, launched The Comic Book Trust of India a couple weeks ago. According to their site, the Trust is "a pioneering not-for-profit organization dedicated to fostering, promoting, and elevating the vibrant world of graphic arts and the comic book industry across India. Established with a profound commitment to nurturing creativity and supporting talent, our trust serves as a unifying platform for all key stakeholders – from the imaginative individual creators who bring stories to life, to the dynamic small publishers who champion diverse voices, and other integral members of the ecosystem."

In the short-term, they're trying to set up a digital hub for Indian comic creators, professionals, and fans. More significantly, they're hoping to also set up some financial support initiatives, like legal aid and a grant program. I can't seem to find anything noting where they're getting the seed money for this, but it seems as if this Trust was at least partially spurred by India's formal Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming, and Comics (AVGC) policy, it might be part of a larger grant from the Indian government. (To be clear, that's total speculation on my part.)

On a longer scale, they're hoping to develop a more formal infrastructure for comics and comics advocacy in India. Things like promoting pro-comics policies in the government, school outreach -- including partnering with universities to estamblish college level curriculum and degrees -- and establishing a national comic book archive.

I'm not very familiar with the Advisory Council or the Management Team, and I don't have the slighest clue on how one might go about navigating whatever legal hurdles in India might be in the way of any of that. But I wanted to call attention to the endeavor and make the suggestion that anyone even remotely interested head over to their site to check out what they're about. I'm obviously all in favor of making comics more popular and more accessibile to wider audiences, so I'd like to wish their team the very best and hope to report on how successful they've become in some surprisingly short time!

Webtoon recently released their fourth quarter 2025 results. The short version is that recorded an operating loss of $13.2 million US in the quarter. And while they tried to spin that as an improvement over the fourth quarter of 2024, it's an increase from the $11.6 million US they lost in the third quarter 2025. They also had a decrease in revenue from Q3 -- $378 million US in Q3 versus $330.7 million US in Q4.

Not surprisingly, their statement tries to spin everything in a very positive light, heavily leveraging the recent agreement with Disney and talking up a number of upcoming projects. Aside from the agreement, though -- which was announced back in August -- they don't really have anything to actually show. Just the repackaging of seven Disney/Star Wars/Marvel titles from the past several years, all of which, I believe, had already been converted to a digital format for Amazon. Most of what they're promoting in their reporting is about all the grand plans they have in place for later.

Despite all the positive vibes they try to give off, it doesn't seem like the market is buying into it. Their stock price dropped ~10% almost immediately, and has lost another 10-ish% in the days since. As of this writing, it currently sits at the lowest it's been since just before the announcement with Disney, meaning that they've completely wiped out all the gains they got from the agreement in the first place and they're once again sitting at about 40% of the IPO price from June 2024.

Now a company doesn't live and die by its stock price, and plenty of companies operate at a loss for several years while they try to set themselves up for longer term success. Indeed, their 2024 annual report expressly states, "We have a history of net losses, and we anticipate increasing expenses in the future, and we may not achieve or maintain profitability. If we fail to control our content-related costs, the expenses we incur may exceed the increase in revenues."

Back in September, I wrote...

I don't wish ill against Webtoons, and don't want to rain on their parade exactly, but I think it's worth keeping some perspective here too... I think what we're looking at here is a company trying very hard to make things work, and they've thrown a crudload of time and money at it. But given their current operations, I don't think there's anything to be particularly excited about. This Disney deal doesn't strike me as likely to bring in a ton of opertaing capital -- if the licensing costs themselves don't increase their quarterly losses -- and I would just urge any creators posting through Webtoon to make sure that that isn't their ONLY venue for posting/earning money from their webcomic. You should never rely on a single source to begin with, and this setup with Disney doesn't strike me as being able to change Webtoon's direction.

In that 2024 annual report, they cite several potential risk factors. (Detailing risks in an annual report is pretty standard; don't read too much into the fact those are there.) They list three things that they'll need to nail down in order to grow their business and become profitable: attract high quality creators and their comics, attract more users, and "innovate and expand our advertising business." (The wording is a bit ambiguous there; I'm not sure if they talking about innovation broadly or specifically within the context of advertising.) That report is from March 2025 and I'm not sure I can say they've really done anything they mentioned about growing their business. I mean, you coudl argue they have high qualities creators by virtue of the already-created comics from Disney/Star Wars/Marvel, but that's a bit of a stretch, I think. Their "Monthly Paying Users" has remained pretty flat year-over-year, as has revenue. And I'm not aware of any innovations -- either within the context of advertising or without; indeed, my understanding is they've actually stripped away functionality.

I found a quote on GlassDoor from a former employee who was laid off in early 2024: "I thought the strategy, as it was communicated to me, was muddy and often changed radically with little or no notice... it's still unclear what direction the company is headed." I think that sums up my opinion as well. They really don't seem to have a sense of what to do with their platform to make money. Argueably, everyone who's tried making a "single source" platform for webcomics has failed, and the only reason Webtoon is still around is because they had several years being propped up financially by Naver. With them no longer in the picture, I have to wonder if they'll remain around long enough to discover that elusive formula for success.

This month, the University of Mississippi Press is launching a new series of comic creator biographies called Biographix. Instead of all the usual suspsects, though (i.e. Kirby, Lee, Eisner, Crumb...) they're trying to tackle creators whose lives have been less well-documented. Folks like Howard Cruse, Ben Katchor, Gene Luen Yang... They were able to send me an advance copy of their biography of Mark Gruenwald, which is formally due out at the end of the week.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Gruenwald, but he always struck me as the heart of 1980s and early '90s Marvel. When I was reading Marvel in the early '80s, it seemed like the company was driven by some very powerful creators making what would become iconic stories. John Byrne's Fantastic Four. Walt Simonson's Thor. Frank Miller's Daredevil. And then as the mid-80s started rolling around, there was a bit of a shift. While those types of stories were still being told, they were mostly contained to their own titles, but we started to see efforts to make sure it was easy to coalesce them all and make them easily understandable. George Olshevsky's indexes got "official" treatments published by Marvel. The Marvel Handbooks. Marvel Saga. Even Marvel Age, which was designed as a vehicle to promote upcoming books and storylines, started to "organize" the stories pre-emptively, telling readers how crossover events like "Inferno" or "Atlantis Attacks" tied together before they were even published.

Pretty much all of that was Mark's doing.

Before reading Paul V. Allen's biography on him, I knew that. Mark's name was on all of those projects. What I learned in reading the biography was how and why his name was on those projects.

Allen seems to have had good access to many of Mark's friends and relatives, including his sister and his widow. Which means that the book covers Mark's life in its entirety very well, and includes a number of family photos and any number of personal recollections. In fact, the level of detail on every part of his life included in the book from different sources almost suggests Allen could've easily have filled a book twice as large if he'd been allowed a longer page count. I know of at least a dozen anecdotes and stories about Mark that aren't even passingly referenced in the book. But I think that it not being longer is a plus. Allen offers plenty of detail to let the reader get to know who Mark was and how he approached everything, but without getting bogged down in minutia that could bore a casual reader.

I think that's where the real success of the book lies. It's not just a list of facts and dates like an extended Wikipedia entry; it really starts to capture who Mark was an individual, including some of his faults. (Which is, frankly, the first time I think I've seen anyone do that about him.) You do get a sense of Mark's passionate approach to life in general and comics in particular. And for me personally, it showcases just how much of my comics reading experiences as a teen were shaped both directly and indirectly by him. Even though I read almost none of his Captain America, Squadron Supreme, DP7, or Quasar until years after the fact.

I've long appreciated what Mark brough to Marvel Comics, and I'm glad that we now have a really good biography of him that fills in all the holes in my knowledge about him. Of the biographies I know are in the Biographix line, Mark's was the one that appealed to me the most, but if they're all written like this, I think the entire series would be worth filling out your bookshelves.

As I said, Paul V. Allen's Mark Gruenwald is due out from the University of Mississippi Press later this week and retails for $20 US for the paperback version. It should be available through your favorite bookstore.

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: Lift Every Voice
https://ift.tt/Dh87tPZ

Kleefeld on Comics: Mad Magazine as a Media Literacy Educator
https://ift.tt/a7wdcgW

Kleefeld on Comics: Grace Everett circa 1939
https://ift.tt/gxrDwud

Kleefeld on Comics: Unintentional Media Literacy Lesson from Dark Horse
https://ift.tt/HTJRYMK

Kleefeld on Comics: The Conquest of Hunger
https://ift.tt/49JfYxi

Public service comics are almost never actually good. Even if you get top-notch talent working on them, they tend feel forced and preachy under the best circumstances. But make up an anthropomorphic burlap sack as a mascot; give him a lot of dry, superficial exposition on different types of fertilizer; throw in some post-WWII jingoism and 1950s racist sterotypes; wrap the whole thing in a it's-never-not-a-storytelling-cheat dream sequence framework; and you've got... The Conquest of Hunger: Featuring Prosper Plenty and His Magical Chemicals from 1951.

Somebody at the National Fertilizer Association thought it was a good idea, but no one who worked on it signed their name to it. And in the three-quarters of a century since it was published, no one has owned up working on it either. It's easy to laugh at such an effort now in 2026, but I'm pretty sure no one was proud of the work back then either.

Anyway, courtesy of the Science History Institute, I offer up The Conquest of Hunger: Featuring Prosper Plenty and His Magical Chemicals.

The big news yesterday was that Mike Richardson, founder and publisher of Dark Horse Comics, was fired by the company he sold Dark Horse to 2022. Well, technically, they're not saying they're firing him. What they're saying is Jay Komas has been made interm CEO. The official statement reads, in its entirety...

As part of our long-term vision to better align Dark Horse within a more connected and forward-looking group structure, we are implementing changes to modernize the business and strengthen collaboration across publishing, games, film, merchandise, and other key areas. Our goal is simple: to ensure Dark Horse is positioned for sustained success while continuing to serve creators, partners, and fans at the highest level.

With this in mind, Jay Komas has stepped into the role of Interim CEO at Dark Horse. Jay brings extensive experience with global intellectual properties across games, film, and consumer products. Over the course of his career, he has held senior leadership roles at Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard, and LucasArts, where he worked with some of the most recognized entertainment brands in the world. His background in managing and expanding IP across multiple categories will be instrumental as we build on Dark Horse’s legacy and strengthen its position in an increasingly connected entertainment landscape.

Please be assured that Dark Horse remains fully committed to working closely with you and to creating the very best products and experiences for fans worldwide. Our partnerships are central to everything we do, and this transition is designed to enhance collaboration, unlock new opportunities, and support long- term growth together.

In closing, it is important to recognize Mike Richardson’s extraordinary contribution to Dark Horse and the broader comics and entertainment industry. Without his dedication, vision and creative leadership, Dark Horse would not be the company it is today. His impact on creators, stories and fans over the decades has been profound, and we are deeply grateful for the foundation he built. We look forward to continuing our work together and to sharing more about our plans in the coming months.

Notice first that Richardson isn't mentioned at all until the last paragraph. They never actually say he's out, just that there's this new guy in the role that Richardson has held. Granted, general decorum dictates that no one is going to say, "Richardson was really a pain in our ass, so we fired him." But that they effectively say nothing about him -- and only then as almost an afterthought -- suggests this is an acrimonious split. If Richardson was walking away on good terms with the current owners, that would have been the lead in this statement.

Next, they do talk up Komas' experience and background, but they also explicitly mention that he's tapped as interim CEO. That is, he knows the business well enough to keep the day-to-day operations going, but they either feel he's not qualified to lead the company or they disagree with whatever direction he wants to take it. His role as CEO is only temporary until they get someone else in. And that further suggests Richardson's departure was acrimonious; if there weren't bad blood there, he would have stayed on while they conducted a search for a new CEO.

Finally, while not mentioned in the statement, Richardson is 75. And they made zero attempt to spin his depature as a retirement. They are fully owning that this wasn't exactly voluntary on Richardson's part, and they're not even trying to paper over things with a veneer of typical business-polite respectability. The average age of retirement in the US tends to float in the mid-60s, so with Richardson a solid decade past that, it would've been dead-easy to say he simply wanted to retire. Everyone would've immediately taken that at face value. But by expressly not mentioning that, that's a clear indicator that Richardson didn't leave voluntarily.

I say "voluntarily" but it's possible Richardson did indeed quit and was not fired. But because this was so sudden, I suspect it was one of those "You're fired!"/"You can't fire me because I quit!" situations. The outward tone of Dark Horse has definitely changed since 2022, and some of their larger recent business decisions -- notably axing the TFAW online store last year -- didn't feel like they came from Richardson. So I wouldn't be surprised to hear there were conflicts between Richardson and the Embracer Group board.

I don't offer any of this as gossip -- I honestly have zero insider information on any of this; I've never even met Richardson. I bring all this up as a lesson in reading corporate statements. No one I've seen reporting on this seems to have tried reading between the lines, and I think there's a lot that is not being said in that statement! Media literacy means reading not only what is written, but how it's written and -- equally important -- what isn't written!