Behind the Bastards - Part One: The Dennis the Menace Creator was a Shockingly Bad Man

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

Robert sits down with Randy Milholland to discuss Hank Ketcham, the creator of Dennis the Menace. Despite his cartoon's kid-safe nature, Hank mined his own wife and child for content while systematically destroying both of their lives. (2 Part Series) Sources: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1990/05/05/denniss-dear-old-dad/3034ac5a-25fc4f92-ad9b-f3092c69ca67/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dennis-the-menace/ https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Dennis-creator-Hank-KetchamCartoonist-who-2915346.php https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-03-26-vw-587-story.html https://carmelmagazine.com/archive/life-after-dennis-the-menace  https://archive.is/ZpH29 https://prabook.com/web/dennis.ketcham/2384085  https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/dennis-the-deviant/ https://heykidscomics.fandom.com/wiki/Dennis_Ketcham https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2010/10/18/the-odd-case-of-dennis-themenace/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/xuyjoo/dennis_the_menac e_creator_hank_ketchum_with_son/ https://www.grunge.com/289273/the-tragic-true-story-of-dennisthe-menace/ https://people.com/archive/dennis-grown-older-vol-40-no-5/ https://archive.org/details/merchantofdennis0000ketc/mode/2up?view=theater  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Ah, what's raising my children? If you're the subject of today's episode, the answer is no one really. I'm Robert Evans, this is Behind the Bastards, a podcast about terrible parents. We've just finished our Steve Jobs episodes who was a shitty parent for the history books. And today, folks, we have a horrible, horrible man

who was also a horrible, horrible parent for you. That is Boy Howdy, this guy, much worse than you're guessing he's going to be. And before I introduce our subject for this week, this is a cartoonist who we're going to be talking about. And whenever I bring on a cartoonist bastard, and there are many, we have our resident official

Behind the Bastards podcast cartoonist, Bastard and there are many we have our resident official behind the bastards podcast cartoonist Randy Mulholland Brandy's thank you so kindly that was a lovely intro I really can't wait for this especially because the person you're talking about His property is done by the same syndicate. I work for Speaking of that You are the creator of the webcomic Something Positive,

and you are currently Popeye the Sailor Man's uncle, I think is legally? I think so. I think I'm his adoptive father now at this point. Yeah, his adoptive father. You draw him to this day. And actually, we'll be talking a little bit about that, about how comics go on when their original artist no longer wants to or is able to draw them and stuff. That's part of the story here. But our bastard for this episode is the Dennis the menace guy and I know what you're saying people the term history's greatest monster gets thrown around a lot Mostly by me. Yeah, mostly by me But obviously who could be a better pick for the worst human being in history than the guy who draws Dennis the menace?

I don't know. I'm actually surprised you didn't try to do the Hitler of comics because you also threw that alone. I've done a lot of the Hitler of X titles over the last couple of years. So if I'm not a very creative man, I know. Randy, what can you tell me about the Dennis the menace creator Hank Ketchum, not spelled like the guy from Pokemon. Well, I know that he served in the Navy during World War II. I know the names of a few of his ghost artists who worked on the comic and the comic book. I also know that around the time Dennis the Menace

launched in America, in Britain, a comic also named Dennis the Menace, completely unrelated unrelated launched. I know he was not Rumored to be the nicest dad not that that will be talking a lot about him as a dad That is her son. Anyway, not his first kid Yeah, I thought I would say that there's definitely a lot of like sadness involved with children because like the TV show I know there were some sad things happening to Jay North as well. I'm nervous. I'm not gonna lie. This is an interesting story. Obviously, like we're talking about a lower stakes bastard

than a lot of our our war criminals and genocide heirs here. But I think it's interesting both because Hank's career kind of straddles the birth of animation as a field and he is involved in some of like the early acts of bastardry within animation as it relates to like Disney and labor issues and he's also just a fascinating case study of like where's the ethical line about creating art that's inspired by your life right because most people who do some sort of fictional art especially for like an audience and an ongoing basis their real-life experiences play into that somehow. It's like a common joke that like writers and whatnot,

you know, take stuff from their lives and put it into their stories. And is there actually a moral line there? Is there a degree to which that's like wrong? Like what is the extent to which you should do that when it starts to have an effect on the real people that you're inspired by? These are actually some kind of tough questions that I think we'll be mulling over a little bit. to do that when it starts to have an effect on the real people that you're inspired by?

These are actually some kind of tough questions that I think we'll be mulling over a little bit, but I will tell you, Hank does the wrong thing in every possible instance, so. Oh no. Yeah. Oh God. Yeah. So Hank King Ketchum was born on March 14th. Wait, I'm sorry, did you say King?

King is his middle name, yeah. Okay, I was gonna say King Ketchum. I was like, March 14th. Wait, I'm sorry, did you say King? King is his middle name, yeah. Okay, I was gonna say King Ketchum. I was like, oh my God. And again, not like Ash Ketchum of the Pokemons, that's K-E-T-C-H-U-M, Hank is K-E-T-C-H-A-M. And he was born on March 14th, 1920 in the flooded hellscape of Seattle, Washington. His father's first name was Weaver, which I don't like.

I don't think that's a very good name. That's a weird one. It's a fine last name if you want to get shot by the FBI or at least have several members of your family shot by the FBI, but a bad first name. And his mother's first name was Virginia, which I'm neutral on. When he was six years old, he met an illustrator who was a friend of the family. And this is like his inciting incident as a kid who wants to become a cartoonist. And here's how Hank describes that moment. A lot of artists, I'm going to guess, basically everyone who becomes an artist has a moment

like this. Hank describes his in his autobiography, which has the most insufferable title of a famous cartoonist, autobiography imaginable. Do you know what this autobiography is named? I am dreading this. So, you know, he's the guy who created Dennis the Menace, right? Not weird that people might want an autobiography for that.

What do you call that? I'm the Dennis the Menace guy? You know, Hank Ketchum, a life in cartoons? No. Drawing trouble. That's why I go for drawing trouble. Drawing trouble, sure. All of these are fine titles. He calls it the Merchant of Dennis the Menace.

Oh. Like the Merchant of Venice for no reason? Cause there's no similarity, other than the fact that there's an is in both. There's no through line between the Merchant and Venice and drawing Dennis the Menace. I'm so angry about this and I shouldn't be. And I don't normally say this,

but Hank Ketchum should have been murdered by the government Um, what else can you say about? I'm sorry. I cannot wait till the next national cartoonist society meeting after this podcast Well, I can't wait to my next editor's meeting where they're like, hey heard you were on a podcast talking about a property We distribute but seriously, why would you call it the merchant of Dennis the Menace? That's such a bizarre title. I'm sure he thought it was very clever and I'm sure he had no one who was willing to say no.

Yeah. I mean, it is a little telling because past a certain point in his career, this is just a property he's marketing rather than a, which I mean, I don't actually hold that against him, right? Like if you draw a doodle of a misbehaving little kid and it makes you a very wealthy man, you kind of ride that shit as long as you can, right?

Who wouldn't, you know? It's also really common in comics that, you know, a lot of times you'll have cartoonists who will get ghost artists and ghost writers. And you know, once you get big enough, you can, like, I mean, Jim Davis hasn't drawn Garfield probably in decades. God, no, no, of course not. And we're well on the record of saying there's nothing wrong mean Jim Davis hasn't drawn car fill probably in decades. God. No, no, of course not And we're well on the record of saying there's nothing wrong with Jim Davis No, I mean, it's really not a lot of my friends who got in fact a lot of cartoonists like Jim Davis

Got their start in this field. Yeah being ghost artists. It's a very common Yeah, yeah And and of all the ways to like get that kind of money Drawing a little weird little guy is like one of the least problematic ways, right? Like there's not as much exploitation. Normally, with Hank there kind of is, because his child is like the sacrifice he makes for this comic to work,

but I've gotten ahead of myself here. Anyway, here's how he describes first getting pilled on the wonders of working as a cartoonist. As I watched him scribble some quick sketches of Barney Google, Moon Mullins, and Andy Gump, I couldn't wait to borrow his magic pencil and try my own hand at drawing these comic strip characters. It looked so easy and such a lot of fun, I couldn't have been more than six years old at the time.

Well, the two men sure came up with a good way to get rid of me in a hurry. I moved over to the creaky roll-top desk, found some thin sheets of paper, and remained there until dinner, slavishly tracing the visitor's sketches, quite sure the pencil was magic." And yeah, I think that that's not an uncommon kind of story, right? Yeah. I think it's how a lot of us start off, either we see it or we just are lucky enough to start doodling one day and you just can't stop. Yeah, yeah. And that's what happens with Hank. He starts doodling when this guy comes over, he sketches his drawings.

He actually has the opposite experience I had as a little kid where his teacher finds his cartoons and takes them in front of the class to be like, look at how good Hank is at drawing. And she has him like draw for the class to like praise him, not as like to punish him or whatever. Look at this garbage you were doing instead of growing them.

This piece of shit. I had those teachers, I had a lot of those teachers. Yeah, I got in trouble because my cartoons were way too violent. And in a post-Columbine America, you didn't want your teacher to find your notebook with those drawings. Oh shit, I didn't realize how lucky I was

to graduate in 1994. Yeah. I would have been in so much trouble for so many things. Yeah, I mean, it's only gotten worse since. Like I was not there nearly as bad as it would become, but like I did catch some flack for some of my cartoons. So in his autobiography, Hank describes himself as lucky, and I find this interesting because he's aware

that like other kids spend years trying to figure out what they're going to be and like often never really do. And he knew from like, as long as he could remember, he knew the only thing I want to be is a cartoonist. It is interesting. He's got that kind of self-awareness. That is a blessing, right? Knowing that you have this one very specific thing and it's the only thing you'll ever

want to do. I can relate. Actually, that's something my earliest memory was learning people can draw for a living and that's what I wanted to do. I, God, I hope that is the only similarity between us. I also hope that's the only similarity between you. In his autobiography, he describes himself as like becoming increasingly obsessed

with cartoons as a child. The wondrous world is inhabited by Barney Google, Harold Teen, Mutt and Jeff, the Tunerville folks, and the Gumps, and like, I went through those and I was like, I have not heard of any of these fucking people. Not Mutton Jeff a little bit, a little bit, yeah. Andy, like, the Gumps was actually one of the first comics

to have continuity. It started, I think, just before Thimble Theater did. It was, also had like one of the first storylines where a character died. It was a national event. People freaked out about it. Oh, wow. Yeah, I bet that destroyed America for a while.

Oh, wow, that dates it. Yeah, it was like, I think it was Spanish flu. It was something that a woman got sick and it was a very big deal. Granted today, I would probably get fireballed for doing the same thing. But at the same time. That is, I don't know if kids today are having these experiences,

but I like one of the first things I remember learning about death was from a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. Oh, the bird? What would they find the bird or the fox? No, it was the raccoon, I think. Oh, that was so sad. Yeah, yeah, it really was. And one of the fun things about cartoons

is that they never die, at least if they're successful enough, they never die, right? The reason I bring that up is because some of these comics I hadn't heard of, I looked up, and in the case of Bunky and Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, which is a cartoon, I was not aware of. It was created the year before Hank was born, and it is still in print today.

I know the artist. Under-'m a cartoonist. Yeah. Oh, cool. Oh, wow. Rose is a sweetheart. He's a wonderful man. Again, it's a King features and like them both theater. It's a comic that started off at one character, Barney Google. Yeah.

Eventually they're broadening, Snuffy Smith and Snuffy kind of outshine Barney and he just kind of vanished from the comic. Yeah, they like killed him or took him away for a while and he came back. He comes back every once in a while. The current artist does his best to bring him back and actually bring back a lot of old characters from the old days. And yeah, I had not heard of this comic at all. When I came upon the name, I was immediately like, I wonder if this has anything to do about like Google the search engine. And you know, the Barney Google comic, I think, obviously exists before the concept of computers in most people's mind.

But the answer is probably as a matter of fact, in the book, the hidden history of coined words published by Oxford University Press, author Ralph Keys argues that Barney Google was probably the inspiration for the term Goggle, which is the term for a very large number, which is what inspired the name for Google. So what does all this mean? Should you burn down Google headquarters and draw in quarter their C-suite in public as vengeance for Barney Google's suffering? Maybe.

I haven't read the comic. I don't know. Probably. I feel like I should say at this point, no opinion here expressed as a opinion of King Features Syndicate or their parent company Hearst. I just don't wanna get fired. Yeah, none of these are even my opinions usually. So the first animated movie that's gonna come out

that Hank is gonna be aware of as a kid is the French film, Fantasmagory. Oh yeah, that's a board game. I've heard of that, I haven't seen it. I've seen some pictures. Ancient stuff. And like we're saying probably because like a lot of media from then was lost.

So you can never say like for certain, nobody tried it before. But if you look at least from the clips I've seen and stuff, it actually kind of reminds me a little bit of Don Hertzfeld's work. Like a lot of it's like stick figure style animated art. There were also some pseudo animated movies that kind of predated Phantasmagory, but they were all animated by like putting images on a wheel and projecting light through it and

like moving the wheel around to make the images move or some shit, which is like, it's not considered like it's not animation in the same way that like traditional animation has done right now. Cartoons grew up fast from this point. In 1928, we get Steamboat Willie, a short film by Walt Disney and Ubi Works that is generally considered the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, recently entered the public domain, as I think we're all aware. I'm doing a comic based off of it right now.

I want to see if I can get sued. Where is that line? You're allowed to call him Mickey, right? see if I can get sued. Where is that line? You're allowed to call him Mickey, right? Yeah, I'm allowed to call him Mickey. He's not allowed to have red shorts. He's not allowed to have gloves. I love copyright law. It's a little dance we do.

And I know there's some poor lawyer in the basement of Disney whose job is every day, like has he fucked up it is fucked up it is wild that like is like a seven or eight year old Hanks watching Steamboat Willie with no idea that like in the not too distant future this mouse will be worth more than most of the nations on earth like he will absolutely change large aspects of how life is lived and creativity functions for a huge percentage of the human population. Yep.

It's so fucking crazy where that all goes. But yeah, so he loves this as a little kid. He's enthralled by all animation. You have to think about animation in the period where Hank is a kid. It's not like we, animation today is like, yeah, kids like animated movies, right? And so do adults. Animated movies are a big deal. Animation is kind of like, it's closer to the internet than it is to like a type of entertainment. Yeah.

Because the idea that you could just like draw pictures and have them move and have that on a screen is like such a wild, like it really has this almost hallucinogenic effect on people in the day because it's such a new concept like you have to imagine going from like dying of the Spanish flu to seeing Fantasia is quite an experience you know. Oh my god or seeing the goddamn donkey transformation in Pinocchio. Yeah that shit's intense you know and I do think that like really or you know it might be better than compared to the internet,

compared to like how YouTube videos impacted the development of kids who were born like after the 2000s, right? It's both in some good ways and some bad ways, it's this thing that just like utterly captures a generation. And Hank is right in the center of the blast radius. Hank saw cartoons from a very early age, not just as a method of self-expression, but as a path to money.

His first job was when he was 10 years old. A classmate with a rich dad offered to pay him 25 cents cash, is how he writes it in his book, if he drew 100 cartoon heads. And he describes this as like a nightmare job. It was like the first time he took a horrible gig work animating piece and was like, oh, this sucks. Why would anyone do this?

Every cartoonist has that job in their history. I'm glad he got out of the system early. Back in his day, like that was the equivalent of mid journey is find a kid who's good at sketching and give him a quarter. His childhood was not all cartoons, of course, and they seem to have served as at least a partial escape from his world. And he grows up in a world you might want to escape. He kind of comes into being right after the Spanish flu and shit calms down, and he grows up right in the teeth of the Great Depression.

And his own description of his father's discipline style sounds unpleasant to say the least. Quote, my sister Joan is two years younger than I, and we grew up as two normal, well-behaved, insecure, terrified kids. Dad served in the Navy during the First World War and was by nature a stern disciplinarian. I don't know what prompted it, but one evening he brought home a horse whip, a stiff tapered thing about three feet long that he solemnly placed in the corner near the front door. My first thought was, oh boy, when is he gonna bring the horse? The rules were quite simple, no whipping above the knees.

Now maybe this is as it should be on horses, but on skinny little underfed kids, it's murder. However, it did stimulate the circulation on cold afternoons and I developed various techniques of fancy footwork that to this day have given me the reputation of being an agile dancer. Which is like a very funny and lighthearted way of saying, yeah, like my dad beat the hell out of us when we were bad.

Oh my God. I love the old times. I'm sure that's not gonna come back later in any way. That's not gonna affect anything in the future, is it? I mean, you know, his kid might've done better if he'd been like there and just smacking him sometimes. This is a weird case of like, honestly, if he'd just been there at all it might have been better I

Don't know. I can't make a conclusive stance there still like what a what a fuck of a thing like yeah We grew up as normal terrified children. That's not fucking normal dad brought a whip and just laid it in the room So we had to think about it for a while. Oh my Jesus Christ. I mean I had I had the healthy version of that as a kid, which was my dungeon master bought a copy of the Book of Vile Darkness and just like set it out on the table for like five sessions before he ever used anything from it.

And the instant we're in a fight and he like grabs it from the middle of the table and opens it up, we're all like, oh fuck. Oh no. That was my having a switch pulled on me by my dad. That was a 3.5 edition book, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, that was a 3.5. Oh God, I'm a fucking nerd.

Yeah, I had that book, it was awful. Great, great source book. I never used it on a player once, I couldn't. So Hank doesn't claim to have had a bad relationship with his father, who actually supported his ambitions to be an animator. I do think that description of himself and his sister as insecure and terrified shouldn't just be read as a joke. We should maybe use that as a little bit of like a oh

Yeah, the boomers make a lot of sense or in their predecessors like I'm not surprised They've done some of the things they've done as a generation. Nope, not remotely Hank would later claim that the first animated thing that really had a huge impact on him was The Three Little Pigs. This is a Disney short film that's released in 1933, and this is what makes him want to be an animator specifically. He always wants to draw. He's like, because there's a bunch of different jobs for animators. You could do advertisements.

You could do cartoons. Film animation is new, and it's Three Little Pigs that makes him want to become specifically a Walt Disney animator. I was with the early color ones as well, wasn't it? Yes, yes it is. It comes out in 33 and then four years later is the very first animated film of all time, Snow White and some dudes.

Yes, right, which still actually looks great. It does. They really worked hard. The work that is court. It was groundbreaking Yeah, it's such a cool thing about animation. Is that like it ages but not in a way where it like It doesn't look worse with age good drawings are always good drawings You can date them because like people don't draw the way they did for Snow White anymore, but they don't look bad Well, even across town the Fleischer studio did their Gulliver's Travels movie

Which you know a lot of rotoscope and actually even the the Popeye meets Sinbad 30 minutes short they did is still one of the most stunning things I've ever seen It has an actual real background. They had they rotated and it's Sells over. Yeah, I I love when they I mean I grew up on a lot of rotoscoped stuff Like I'm a big I'm a big like Fritz the cat. Boxxy? Fan, yeah, Boxxy. Yeah, Boxxy loved rotoscope.

Oh yeah, yeah, he couldn't get enough of it. And that was when you're 19 years old and hallucinating every week and recreationally, like rotoscoped movies hit different. He didn't have hallucinogens probably, but he did have cartoons. And as he kind of grows into an adolescent, he continues to like love drawing. And he gets, what's weird is he describes it as like, this is what makes him a cool kid. Like I've never actually, I've read a lot of, cause I like cartoons.

I've read a lot of cartoonists' autobiographies and memoirs. I have never heard a cartoonist say that it got them laid. Not once. But Hank Ketchum makes that claim. And here's what he says. I accepted most any request for a funny drawing. It was a splendid ego massage. I received as much attention from the girls

as the muscular athletes and was never out of breath. That sounds like he was getting dates from both, which is the headcanon I want. Yeah, I don't know if I really believe that, Hank. Just because I've never heard of a guy drawing cartoons, getting that kind of attention from, but perhaps that happened. I mean, I did technically meet my spouse

because of my comic, but I still like, in high school it was like- Not in high school. Oh God, no, it was like, oh could you draw this horse? I'm give it to my boyfriend. Okay. Here you go. Yeah Absolutely not but I don't know maybe it was a different era Disney animators were the I don't know What's a sexy job is anything sexy anymore? Tick-tock your bills. Yeah

Having more money than rent costs. Yeah, that's pretty hot So after he graduates from high school, Hank hitchhiked to Hollywood and talked his way into a job at an ad agency. Wait, he hitchhiked? Yeah, he hitchhiked. From Seattle? Yeah, yeah, down to,

I think that's not that bad. I mean, I guess a little back then, like no car's gonna go particularly fast to begin with, but damn. And he makes the claim that like, you could never do this today, everything's too dangerous today. And I don't know, I have friends who hitchhike now.

It's not that much worse. You may just be more scared of the world. I would argue it's probably dangerous back then. It was not safe back then. Yeah, there was nobody to check in if you went missing. Looked up Jake Ball sometime from Texas at the same time period.

Ran a hotel and he just threw people to alligators. I mean, it's just, he got lucky. This is why I keep trying to start an alligator farm in my backyard and my neighbors on the property keep saying Robert You can't just buy you can't keep alligators alive in the Pacific Northwest by just buying hundreds of them and hoping the body heat Works out that's not the way alligators are if they love each other. They'll find a way. That's what I say It's and that's kind of how Hank feels because he loves Walt Disney. And he says that as he's hitchhiking down to Los Angeles, the only thing on his mind is Walt Disney.

He gets a job doing some kind of scrub work here and there. And this shows how easy it is to break into Hollywood. He moves to Hollywood with nothing. He gets a gig doing a little bit of work for a studio making $12 a week. And his bedroom, which comes with three cooked meals a day costs $6 a week. Like without food, you're lucky if you're doing that well. Income is a percentage of rent in Los Angeles these days.

It is such a different fucking world. It's so different. Oh my God. And it's different also in that like, there's just, it's opportunity is easier to find because like he has this first job and then that leads him to get a gig at Universal that pays a little bit more as an animator's assistant

because he's working as an animator's assistant based on the strength of showing up and shaking some guy's hand, he's in the right place at the right time when Disney is like, shit, we've got this movie, Pinocchio, and we're trying to finish the son of a bitch and we did not realize Pinocchio was going to be such a complicated endeavor. So we need a fuckload of people really fast.

And we'll pay them 25 bucks a week, which is a lot of money back then. And so that's how he gets his first job with Disney. Yeah, I mean, like Disney paid better than everyone else, but you also worked way more hours than everyone else too, as I recall. Yeah. Yeah. And this is, I mean, this is going to be a lot of work, but it is like, because the industry is so, this is a little tip for all you kids out here. Find a thing that people

have just started figuring out how to make money on and then walk into the room and say, Hey, do you have anything for me to do? That's how to get yourself a job. Was Pinocchio before the big strike? Yes, we were coming to the big strike. But first, you know who never strikes? Would it be these fine ads and products and services? That's right. They have no need to strike because we love them too much.

And they shoot strikers, don't they? Well, yes, occasionally, allegedly. Probably not. Not with live ammunition. The gold people absolutely do. Yeah, and the Reagan coin people. Yeah. And look, to be entirely honest,

we've had the Washington State Highway Patrol on our show and they have definitely shot some strikers in their day. You know? We're not gonna say nobody shoots strikers who advertises on this podcast, but probably not. I'm so sorry, Sophie. In the 1980s and 90s, New York City needed a tough cop like Detective Louis Scarcella.

Putting bad guys away, there's no feeling like it in the world. He was the guy who made sure the worst killers were brought to justice. That's one version. This guy is a piece of sh-t. Derek Hamilton was put away from murder by Detective Scarcella. In prison, Derek turned himself into the best jailhouse lawyer of his generation. And the law was my girlfriend. This is my only way to freedom.

Derek and other convicted murderers started a law firm behind bars. We never knew we had the same cop in the case. Scarcella. We got to show that he's a corrupt cop. They can go f*** themselves. I'm C. Fishman. And I'm Dax Devlin Ross.

And this is The Burden. hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive bonus content, subscribe to True Crime Clubhouse on Apple Podcasts. Everyone in our country has a voice. It's something that says not just where you come from, but who you are. Welcome to NPR's Black Stories, Black Truths, a collection of podcasts and a celebration of the hosts in journalism who've always spoken truth to power. Our voices are as varied, nuanced, and dynamic as the Black experience, and stories should never be about us without us.

Find NPR Black Stories, Black Truths on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Plom and you're Maggie Freeling. Hey, Jason. Every day we learn about another person who shouldn't be in prison. 58 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. So glad you're home. If you want to be part of this work, listen to Wrongful Conviction. The podcast where we hand the mic to innocent people to hear their stories.

How do you send someone innocent to prison? Listen to new episodes of Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Frieling and Jason Flom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. And speaking of shooting strikers, a guy who didn't shoot strikers, but probably-

That's my fault, Sophie, I'm sorry. Who would have made emotional peace with shooting strikers if he had to was Hank Ketchum's boss at Disney. Oh yeah, no. One of the most legendary animators in all of animation history, Ward Kimball. Oh, Ward, who can I say? Wait, Ward Kimball's actually a sweet guy from art.

Yeah, but he was, we'll talk, he's not the worst guy in the story. Okay. We're building to that. I was like, oh no, I don't know if it looks bad about Horace Temple. There's some shade on the fella. Oh no.

So Kimball is one of the first professional animators, period, right? He's of the first generation of people who do this ever. He's one of Disney's old men, I think they call him. Yes, yes. There's a term you'll hear when people talk about Disney in this period, Disney's nine old men,

which is the core animation team that ran the studio's projects from the start in the 20s to the really to the beginning of like the Reagan years. A lot of these guys are still in there. And again, when you think about Disney at the start, we're actually talking about the period where Disney changes into the company that it's going to become. In the early days in the 20s, when Hank is in love with what these guys are making, Disney is kind of closer to like a tech startup than anything. early days in the 20s when Hank is in love with what these guys are making, Disney is kind of closer to a tech startup than anything.

No one's ever done this before. It's hugely profitable. It's really sexy. It's this thing that people are fascinated by. And it's this team of self-taught weirdos who all come together. There's not really much of a hierarchy for a long time. It's very much not a traditional workplace. There was no real animation school at this point either, was there? Yeah. there's not really much of a hierarchy for a long time. It's very much not a traditional workplace.

You know, because it couldn't be. There was no real animation school at this point either, was there? Yeah. Yeah. Everyone's figuring everything out as they're doing it. How could you have a traditional business structure, right? Like where you've got like bosses telling people what to do, I don't know how to do it.

Yeah, all the equipment is being invented as you go along. Yeah, and Ward is again, like undoubtedly, one thing no one can argue, one of the greatest animators who's ever lived. Unfortunately, he was also a strike breaker during the Disney Animation Revolt in 1941. Ward, you broke my heart, dude.

Yeah, yeah. And Ward will talk about being sad about this. I don't know how much that should get you. I'm not here to absolve anyone's soul, but I am gonna try to tell the story as best as I can. That's fair, no. I'm a union kid, so. Yeah, best as I can. That's fair. No, that's... I'm a union kid, so...

Yeah, yeah. ... break my heart, get it over with. So one of the great animators that was central in Disney's early success and in the work that had so inspired Hank was a guy named Art Babbitt. Art worked at Disney through the 30s on productions like Snow White and Fantasia. And Hank Ketchum also worked on some of those when he's new to Disney. But as the Great Depression is kind of going on, as it's like hitting its peak and whatnot, workers are unionizing in the US at a pretty unprecedented rate.

And Babbitt is looking around at Disney, which is turning from this kind of small shop where a bunch of weirdo geniuses are making like great stuff together into like a real sizable business. And he's like, we should probably have a union, you know, we should probably get this locked down before this place gets much bigger. Right. Yeah. Walt Disney is not going to like this. Right. No, he will not. He's not a union man. You know? He did a cartoon on his Alice comedies that literally was making fun of the idea of unions and the heroes literally start

harassing all these chickens who are trying to unionize. How dare they? That's such a Walt Disney thing to do. It really fucking is. And the villain of the cartoon is a communist rooster named Little Red Hensky. Oh my God. I'm not fucking joking.

Oh, Walt, beautiful. That is actually the story. You have just summarized the story of the great Disney revolt, the Disney animation revolt of 1941. So Art and another other employees are like, hey, let's organize. They're trying to organize their shop.

They're talking to their coworkers. And eventually there's like a big fight at the office between Disney and art and Disney fires art, right? And not just art, he fires a number of employees who were trying to organize workers and this sparks a strike. And in a very good book on the subject, the Disney revolt by Jake Friedman, Jake writes, quote, the salaries and this is him trying to explain like kind of where the workers are coming from here. The salaries of the Disney artists average less than those of house painters, read a press bulletin. The Disney Girl inkers and painters receive between $16 and $20 a week.

On Snow White, the much publicized bonuses did not even compensate the artists for the two years of overtime they worked. Snow White made the highest box office gross in history, over $10 million. All the other major cartoon studios in Hollywood have screened cartoon guild contracts. The Disney studio is the only non-union studio in Hollywood. The union demanded a 10% wage increase across the board, a 25% wage increase for the lower bracketed artists, and the reinstatement of the 19 animators who they argued were fired for union activity."

So what's happening here, shouldn't be surprising, is Disney artists are making bank. They have just had the highest, the most, Snow White is the fucking avatar of its day. Except unlike Avatar, it's deeply influential and people will not shut up about it for years, right? Like it is in every conversation. People forget they saw Avatar. Yeah, yeah.

Nothing against it or for it, particularly, but like Snow White- It's just Ferngully. It's just fucking Ferngully. Yeah, yeah. Nothing against it or for it particularly, but like Snow White. It's just Ferngully, it's just fucking Ferngully. Yeah, we've kind of forgotten because it's been so long, how much of a pop culture bomb in like the successful way, not in like, I shouldn't use the term bomb. Like there's nothing very little that has, like The Matrix is actually probably the movie

in our lifetimes that's most like Snow White in terms of like, everyone is obsessed with this, it completely changes the way movies are made, it's copied a million times, like that's probably the closest like thing you could have. And none of these animators who Disney is keeping nights and weekends for months while they're working for years while they're working on this thing, get any kind of like profit sharing or any additional wages for the fact that this movie that they break their backs on makes a bunch of money.

So it's not hard to see why these guys are like, well, we probably should have to strike if we want to get any kind of better deal. Now Hank Ketchum is just another Disney animator during this period of time. And he's one of the guys who all of his coworkers around him are unionizing. And so he's going to be pressured directly to participate in this. And this is what he says about the strike in his autobiography. A handful of dissident artists organized a group of unhappy employees and with the gleeful assistance of the Teamsters Union, Disney was presented a list of grievances.

To no one's surprise, a general strike was called. Most of the men in my unit were recently married, just starting a family and scratching to make monthly mortgage payments, barely making ends meet. They had every reason to join the picket line at the gate. Now, that's a promising start, right? He's, there's that little weird thing about like, the Teamsters unions were so happy to do this,

but he's like, I understand why all my coworkers wanted this. They had a good reason to need to unionize. They had families to support, right? Yeah. And for a few days, Hank joins the picket line, right? For a little while, he does what you should do when your coworkers unionize, right? And this is the thing, what he's kind of insinuating there by saying, I get why my coworkers wanted to is like, well, I didn't really benefit from this. For me, this was good paying work. For me, I was exactly where I wanted to be.

So I didn't wanna strike. And like, yeah, man, that's a strike. You don't always do it for you. And anytime you're striking, it's never just for you or even just for your coworkers. It's for like, especially in a creative discipline, the field, like the art form. You will benefit from it eventually.

If you're not benefiting from now, years down the road when you have health benefits, when you are getting paid over time, when you have like something, you will benefit from it. Yeah. And honestly, the pictures I've seen of the Disney strike line, I would have fucking crossed that.

They had a goddamn guillotine. Yes, these guys are so fucking radical. And part of why they're so radical is they're very young. The average Disney employee is under 25, right? So these guys, number one, they all grew up during the depression. This is a time when socialism is in a very different place in American public consciousness.

Like it is a lot more people are openly calling themselves socialist as a percentage of the population back then than tend to today, right? And a lot of these are very radical young men who are also talented artists. And so there's a lot of cool shit that gets made for the Disney strikes.

Those posters were amazing. They're really well drawn. Yeah, the worst people to like have drawing posters for a strike, if you're the boss, it's a bunch of fucking Disney animators. It's like pissed off Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse posters. And then the guillotine, they brought a goddamn guillotine. Yeah, yeah.

Fucking, if only they'd used it. So, because strikes be the way strikes do, a bunch of people who worked for Disney and other outside of animation who were unionized joined the strike. Disney carpenters, machinists, teamsters, and food service workers all refused to cross the picket line. And this is along with most editors and cameramen, right?

Because those are all unionized positions too. And everybody's like, no, you know, we're not going to fucking scab. And this is the Disney strike again is super organized and very militant. One of the things they do is this is a 24 hour a day strike. There are never not animators out in front of the Disney building doing a picket. One of them is always around the side where the scabs are driving through to go work at Disney offices while the strike is going on. They take pictures of every single person who scabs.

Like they have like a spy unit there so that they can shame them. On the line itself, workers took full advantage of the fact that they were the best animators on the planet. Here's how Friedman describes the picket. About 500 men and women were on their feet, walking in a large circle in front of the entrance. Nearly one in ten carried a wooden picket sign, all painted with cartoon characters. "'It's not cricket to pass a picket,'

warned Jiminy Cricket. "'I'd rather be a dog than a scab,' chided Pluto. "'I sign your drawings, you sign your lives,' taunted a caricature of Walt. Michaelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens, Rembrandt all belonged to Gilts. That would I like a little bit less than the, "'I sign your drawings. You sign your lives.

Walt Disney Cartoon. They tried. They tried like I like that. I mean, most of those are pretty good. You know, you know, yeah, there's a really good ones in there. But yeah. And the number 600 shows up a lot because that's how many artists are striking. One of their handouts reads one genius against

600 guinea pigs and then another read Snow White and the 600 dwarves. I guess they're comparing Walt to Snow White there, which kind of works. Well, he did kind of fall asleep and not think into what was going on around him. Sure, sure, probably ate a lot of poison to apples. Why not? So I think this is all kind of cool.

Like everything I read about the Disney animators revolt is like pretty dope. Hank is really pissed off about this. Oh yeah. He considers all of these signs and cartoons that his coworkers are drawing and repurposing for the strike to be, he calls it quote infantile behavior. Oh Jesus. And he grows enraged at his coworkers and specifically the teamsters who he considered quote a bunch of heavy-handed spoil sports interrupting my life of Riley. He is very clear about like, I am angry about this because my life was good. Well, don't you care about your co-workers, bro?

Like, you know, they have a problem. You should care about that. Yeah. He decides to betray his colleagues and returns to work. So this is the thing that he does that is like his first bastard move is he joins the strike initially and then he decides to scab. Like he leaves the picket line and crosses and goes to work drawing for the company. Not remotely okay.

Not remotely okay. He rides to the office with his roommate who's the brother of a Disney manager and is on the side of management. For whatever reason, this actually kind of says a lot about the man. You don't get much about his experiences during the depression other than he talks about what a bad time it was. But he notes at this point in the book that kind of the straw that broke the camel's back was when some of the wives of his fellow animators started cooking meals for everybody in a big communal kitchen. It reminded him of a soup kitchen. And the line

he says is like, well, that was in the past and I'm only a guy who wants to move forward. Right? So I didn't, that's made me decide to scab on the union is seeing a soup kitchen. I don't want to do stuff from the past. You know, that's such a weird justification for betraying your colleagues. That like my dad was a union president. I remember like a lot of union stuff, and it was this common thing. You know, we have a large gathering. There's food. You've got to make sure everyone's fed.

It's just life. And what a weird fucking thing. Oh, no, we're taking care of each other. I can't have this. Yeah. Whenever you have like you've got a coal mine strike, right? And you've got, especially in this period, it's like white workers striking, the mines won't hire black people normally, and then suddenly they get a chance to work at the mine

and make more money than they otherwise would by scabbing. I got nothing against those people, right? Like they're in an impossible, this is the opposite of that. You saw free food and got angry, so you scabbed. That is so opposite of that. Yeah, you saw you saw free food and got angry. So you scammed So weird to me It's and it's weird to the other Disney animators This is the kind of thing they take very seriously and Hank recalls being screamed at as he drives through the picket line

Yes, crunch myself down between Kenny and Albertino two protective linebackers I scrunched myself down between Kenny and Albertino, two protective linebackers, hoping to be invisible as the mercury convertible eased through the mass of chanting wild-eyed revolutionaries. But they spotted me, and I instantly became King of the Finks and the target of other creative terms of outrage and venom. The loudest insults seemed to come from those who I once considered very good pals. It was a shattering experience for many, as in any civil war. The house was divided and close friendships evaporated.

Years later, the stigma remained." I'm like, well, yeah, of course your good pals are pissed. They're striking because they need to pay their mortgage and they just found out you don't care about them. Are you surprised? And what a brave man. I'm gonna try to hide between these larger men. Yeah.

Just such a- What a fucking coward. Such a worm. Such a worm. Such a worm. Oh my God. So as a result of his craven nature, Hank is gonna miss one of the defining moments in entertainment labor history. Now Walt Disney, only he got to save from,

the man was a formidable foe, right? This is not an incompetent guy to go up against as a union. But again, the Disney animators, among other things, had youth on their side. They split the whole crew into two or three hour shifts. And so they keep a 24 hour picket line. They never give up on like protesting. And this is because, yeah, we'll get into that. So because a lot of these guys become famous later, you get some quotes from the ones who

broke trying to explain their behavior. And this brings me back to Ward Kimball, right? Ward is Hank's boss. He is one of the guys who scabs. And he says of it, quote, I felt terrible. Friends on the inside waving to me to come in, friends on the outside pleading with me to stay out. Jesus, I was on the spot.

I won't forgive like, you know, his decision to scab here, but at least he provides more of like a description of like why this would be complicated. Some people you care about a lot are in management. They don't, you know, you feel torn as opposed to Hank who's just like, well, I saw soup kitchen and got pissed. It is, it has to be like a hard thing to decide on. And like we said earlier, he's been there

since almost the start. Yeah. And Walt was his friend. Yeah, and like I get how that's, I'm not like saying it was okay, but I get that more than I get what Hank is describing is his reasoning here, right? Yeah, everything about what Ketchum is saying

is just kind of weasley. Yeah, yeah. So the union issues a warning that animators who stayed would be fined $5 a day plus $100 penalty once shit resumed normality. Inside Disney, one of the Disney executives, Norm Ferguson, told Hank and everyone else who crossed the picket line that any deal that was signed would protect them and cover that amount of money if they stayed loyal.

The thing that was important, the thing that everyone had to do who was scabbing was finish Dumbo. This is the movie they're working on at the time. And when this, the strike interrupts finishing Dumbo, and this comes at a critical moment for Disney. One of the reasons people are pissed is Disney had prior to about this moment, basically been like set up in a series of just like kind of shacks, right? And after they make all this money from Snow White, Walt decides, rather than paying a lot of that money to his employees, decides to reinvest it

into building an elaborate new campus. And he still, he can't fund it with the money they have. He has to get a loan from Bank of America. And Bank of America is willing to invest in this weird new upstart company because they're looking at the money that's coming in. But Bank of America doesn't have enough faith in animation that like if they miss getting Dumbo out on time, right?

The bank could foreclose theoretically, right? That's at least, I don't know how realistic that was as an actual possibility, but that's what Ferguson is warning everybody. That's what Walt is obsessed over, right? If they miss this release date. It's one of those things where like, I don't find, I don't have any sympathy for Disney for that because like his workers on the outside who are striking are

in the same position with their actual houses, not with like the fucking offices that he decided to build. And it was like a $10 million campus this late in the time. It was a lot of money. Which is like what Snow White made. Yeah. Well, if I'm not mistaken, I could be wrong in this. At the same time, I don't think they really got most of their European money from Snow White because when World War II broke out, Nazi Germany was like, we're not sending you anything.

Yeah. You don't get this. They get hurt, I mean, and just in general, like they get hurt because like there's not a European market for a while, effectively, for cartoonists. Honestly, Walt Disney was not a good businessman. Like Disney's company was always kind of hurting. Yeah.

It's not what it was. It wasn't then what it is now. Yeah, yeah. And it was not even all that similar. And I think these workers have a good point of like, well, why are we spending all this money on a new campus instead of taking care of our people? Obviously, I think the workers have a point.

Walt himself is kind of dumbfounded when the strike begins. He had been the one to fire Babbitt, but he never expected his animators would betray him. The company had up to this point been run more like an extended family or friend group than a traditional employer because it's the scrappy startup. This is what really starts the process of changing Disney because as soon as Walt is challenged by the union, he starts to get deranged and he increasingly begins blaming the whole thing on communism. He would later, after the employees win their strike, he's going to inform on a bunch of

them to the House Un-American Activities Community for being communists. But this is an act of callow vengeance, because again, Disney loses the fight. As the Washington Post summarizes, the picketers marched on, bad publicity for Disney's company mounted as did pressure from its creditors. In late July, the government stepped in and in federal arbitration, the studio agreed to various demands, including paid increases, back pay, sick leave, and Babbit's returned. The cash strapped Disney studio shut down for two weeks in late August during a battle with the newly recognized guild about fresh layoffs.

Walt Disney escaped the ordeal, embarking on a government-sponsored South American tour. Three months later, the attack on Pearl Harbor drew the company into World War II. He was going to South America. They're preparing to make the movie Saludos Amigos. Oh, that was in the movie. It was basically to get South America into the war effort. Yeah. That's how he's going to de of get South America into the war effort. Yeah. And he's going to like, that's how he's gonna kind of like de-stress from this.

And then thankfully we need a bunch of propaganda for the war. And that's kind of what saves Disney is making wartime propaganda in this period. Now the strike is going to be the end of the friendly camaraderie that had been central to Disney's early image. What's interesting to me is you get very different pictures

of how that looked depending on who is telling the story. Friedman says it's the returning workers who suffered because they were treated like pariahs by people who were scared that Walt would see them being friendly with someone who had gone on strike, right? And I'm sure that's true. Hank for his part is like, basically says those of us who scabbed got treated differently and that was what was unfair.

Also, he complains a lot about the ping pong tables being taken away in the office, which he points on the strike. I don't know, man. I don't know, man. He's going to have bigger concerns though, because the US enters the big dub dub dose not long after the strike comes to an end, and Hank is right at that sweet, sweet draft and age. So he joins the Navy.

He's gonna serve for the duration of the war. And he kind of lux, gets really lucky here. His status as a Disney animator benefits him a lot because people find out, when his superiors find out, are like, oh, you can draw cartoons? We're not sending you over to get shot at by a crowd. Like you're gonna stay here and you're gonna try to convince Americans to get shot at by a crowd. Like you're going to stay here and you're going to try to convince

Americans to buy war bonds by drawing stuff. Yeah, they use a lot of animators in World War II. Yeah. They saved a lot of them going overseas. Yeah. This is why we need to have another war. It's the only thing that could save our animation industry from AI. Oh God.

Oh, all the poor laid off rooster teeth animators. Yeah. Oh, that is a bummer. Yeah. Oh God, all the poor laid off rooster teeth animators. Yeah. Oh, that is a bummer. Yeah. So Walt writes him a letter while he's, he's working for the army, which is nice considering Walt probably wished he'd entered. We'd entered the war on a different side, but that's it.

That's a story for another day. It was in 1942 after moving to DC to serve in the Navy, that Hank married Alice Mahar. His autobiography says nothing about how they met or her personality at all. He provides one picture that describes her as his Massachusetts mate. The two would have a boy together, Dennis Ketchum, in 1946. And yes, that is the inspiration and namesake for Dennis the Menace. Now, despite the central role that Dennis would play in his later success, his own son scarcely merits

more mention than Alice in this book. And we're gonna get into all of that, but first, you know who does merit mention? I would say the products and services of these fine advertisers. Yeah, I'm gonna tell you right now, folks, forget the name and face of your parents, you know Just remember these advertisers if you have children delete them from your memory and just remember the people who sponsor this show

Done and done. I don't have a father more. I only have Chumba casino. That's right. That's right. Chumba casino is everything In the 1980s and 90s, New York City needed a tough cop like Detective Louis Scarcella. Putting bad guys away, there's no feeling like it in the world. He was the guy who made sure the worst killers were brought to justice. That's one version. This guy is a piece of s***. Derek Hamilton was put away for murder by Detective Scarcella. In prison, Derek turned himself into the best jailhouse lawyer of his generation. And the law was my girlfriend.

This is my only way to freedom. Derek and other convicted murderers started a law firm behind bars. We never knew we had the same cop in the case. Scarcella. We got to show that he's a corrupt cop. They can go fuck themselves. I'm C. Fishman. And I'm Dax Devlin Ross.

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celebration of the hosts in journalism who've always spoken truth to power. Our voices are as varied, nuanced and dynamic as the Black experience. And stories should never be about us without us. Find NPR Black Stories, Black Truths on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. The podcast where we hand the mic to innocent people to hear their stories. How do you send someone innocent to prison? Listen to new episodes of Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Frieling and Jason Flom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

We're back. People online talk about those Chumba ads. I've actually never heard one yet. I haven't heard it either. It is every time I listen to the show. Every time. At least three of them. One of my favorite things is like we get a lot of if it's not like us reading an ad, we often don't really know what's because they're different for like geographical areas,

right? Like they're not going to want to serve the same ad to somebody in like Australia as they are to somebody in Michigan. Yeah. So a lot of times people are like, wow, it's wild, these people are sponsoring you. And I'm like, I didn't know, man. Like it's just a random ad. We had one recently, which I do feel bad about,

you know, we get asked like, what's kind of stuff are you okay with? And a while ago I filled out a thing being like, yeah, you know, I hunt, I shoot. Like there are certain kinds of like hunting a while ago I filled out a thing being like, yeah, you know, I hunt, I shoot. Like there are certain kinds of like hunting and shooting products I might theoretically endorse. I'd want to like know what they were.

And then they, we kind of started running random ads for like a local gun shop in like Kansas or something that like, oh, I don't want to be doing that. I don't know that gun shop. I don't know who those people are. Like I have, we need to fix that right away. Is that, it could be a good gun shop or it could be a real bad one. It could be a very bad gun shop.

Certainly don't want to sponsor that shit at random. So we should have fixed that. And a lot of the like really, really bad ones that have already been like removed come in on like secret categories and like and then it's like you you're coming in as Yeah, miss. No, so Back to Dennis the menace as as we get to this story. It is 1946 Dennis and his new wife Alice

Hank and his new wife Alice had and his new wife, Alice, they had their son, Dennis. Jesus, real mess here, I am. And despite the central role that Dennis would play in his success, his own son scarcely merits more of a mention than like the mother of his child in Hank's autobiography. Hank does provide a loving description of how he came up with the idea for the comic. And this happens once he's out of the Navy,

he moves back West and he establishes a home in Carmel Woods near Monterey that cost him, again, this is like Bay area house he buys, costs $12,000. God damn it. That's like a $12 million home today. At least. He picks up a handful of gigs drawing cartoons for newspapers and magazines like the Saturday Evening Post, and he starts putting together ideas for a comic strip.

In most news articles about the man, you'll hear what comes next described as like he's working one day and his little kid is why Alice tries to put Dennis down and Dennis doesn't want to go to bed. And he like tears up his room. And when his mom walks in and sees the mess Dennis made, she cries out to Hank, your son is a menace. And that inspires Dennis the Menace as a title and both the premise also of this cartoon.

That's kind of accurate, but it leaves out the ugliness of Hank's own description of this moment, which I'm gonna quote from now. At four years of age, Dennis Lloyd Ketchum was a 36 pound handful, too young for school, too big for his playpen, and too small to hit, not old enough for jail, and 100% anti-establishment. One October afternoon in 1950,

I was at home in my tiny studio, finishing a drawing for the Saturday Evening Post when I was startled by a sudden outburst of mother noises coming from the bedroom area of our new home in Carmel. Mother noises? There's, in these two paragraphs, there's so many moments that like, I need to stop. You're like, wait a second, what is a mother noise?

How does, how is that different from a father noise? And why are you so sad your child was too small to hit? When are they big enough to hit, Hank? When are they big enough for jail? What are your opinions on these things? The little darling was supposed to be taking a nap. Instead, he had spent the better part of one hour quietly dismantling his room, bed, mattress, springs, dresser, drapes, and curtain rods.

When the accidental load he carried in his underpants was added to his collection of plastic toys, cookie crumbs, and leftover peanut butter sandwich, it formed an unusual mix, enough to drive an Irish mother to the brink. Now he was my son. Her rich expletives, most of them coined in Boston, were spliced with suggestions of abandonment and threats of bodily harm. After informing me that I could jolly well clean up his room, her parting shot was, Your son is a menace.

Dennis? A menace? I mused. Now, I don't know if I believe that that's exactly how it happened, but interesting things from those two paragraphs that he really make want you to know she's Irish. And he wants you to know she's Irish because there's-

He has some strong opinions on Irish people. He does. Their marriage does not work out and he blames it on her being an alcoholic and she's an alcoholic because she's Irish. That is Hank. That is Hank's attitude, right? And he basically used her in the comic too, didn't he? Yes, yes.

The mother, the dad is based on him, the mother is based on her, the kid is based on their son. The whole cartoon is based on the family that he will be very shortly now abandoning. God fucking damn it. Now, for reasons that will become very clear, Hank had a vested interest in making his wife look bad.

But even his description provides some hints that he was not a present or engaged father. Because he states that rather than actually cleaning up the room like his wife had asked him to, or parenting their son, cleaning up their kid, right? He instead ignores his family to draw the first Dennis the Menace cartoons. This does work out financially. The concept sells out within weeks to the post syndicate. Dennis the Menace launched in March 1951 on 16 newspapers. As a weird aside, and you mentioned this a little earlier, his cartoon debuts at like

the exact same time as a British cartoon named Dennis the Menace with a similar plot. They're both about like kind of misbehaving kids. Both creators agree neither plage the other. This is just a weird coincidence. Like both plagiarized. I think the same day, wasn't it? Yeah, it's like the same day, but both of them, neither of them tries to claim this is plagiarism.

They're both like, nah, man, this is just a weird thing that happened. It's amazing, honestly. Yeah. I guess the universe needed there to be two Dennis the Menace comics in the same way it needed us to have World War I. It was going to make sure that happened. I'm now imagining Dennis the Menace assassinating the Chancellor of Germany.

No, no, no. The Archduke of Austria-Hungary. no, the Archduke of Austria. Yeah, no, you know what? That's the cartoon that we need from these episodes is Dennis the Menace with a sandwich in his hand pumping a bunch of bullets into Franz Ferdinand. Mr. Wilson just, Dennis, stop starting. He's so angry.

He's gonna have to go enact the Schlieffen plan now. I do imagine Mr. Wilson in this as like the military commander of Germany. Oh yeah. So the cartoon is a wild success. It takes off very quickly and it expands in short order into one of the most successful comics in history. This much people know.

What has been lost in the intervening years is a sense of how nasty the original cartoon would be. I don't even mean this as a criticism. It's just surprising. Cause like today's Dennis the Menace, I would not call controversial. No. Right? It's pretty tame humor for like all ages, right?

Nothing against that, but it's not something you would be surprised if someone said there's a really offensive Dennis the Menace cartoon this week, right? Nothing against that, but it's not something you would, you would be surprised if someone said there's a really offensive Dennis the Menace cartoon this week, right? You would think like something must have gone wrong. They must have switched up their captions with the far side. Like what happened that one time? That's an actual moment from cartoon history folks. Look it up. There's like a cartoon where Dennis is talking about like taking people's skin off of their skulls and preserving them because it got swapped with a far side caption.

Oh God, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's in the pre-history of the far side. It really pissed some people off. Oh God, it happened a couple of times too. Yeah, yeah, there's a few times that happened with the far side. I found a few of these early Dennis the Menace cartoons

chronicled in an article by Seattle Times reporter Mark Raymer or Rainer in 2005. And oh boy reporter Mark Rayner in 2005. And, oh boy, I did not expect this. Quote, walking out of an elevator with his concerned looking mom, malicious identity says, did you see that? I pinched that fat dame to make her give me room and she slugged a guy in back of her.

Yes, Jesus Christ. Fat dame, huh? Wow. I will say, like, that's at least a little, that's a lot more colorful than I expected from Dennis the Menace. Well, a lot of those early comics, they got away with a lot more.

Like, even some of the early family circus were like a blue. Yeah, yeah. You could definitely work bluer back then. Quote, a swan with its neck tied in a knot warns its mate, stay away from that kid with the black pants. Armed with a slingshot on a park bench, Dennis asks his mom, hey, do you know how to cook a pigeon?

A teacher tells Dennis' mom, your Dennis is a happy child. He hits Sammy with a sand shovel and I thought he'd die laughing. There's another cartoon where Dennis constructs a crude sap filling a sock with sand to beat people with. Again, this is kinda based. This is actually great. I'm not gonna lie, these are pretty good.

It does get creepier, especially when you think of the real world dimensions here because here's a description of another cartoon. Holding his embarrassed mom's hand, Dennis stops a friend on the sidewalk. Billy, this is my mother, some looker, huh? He walks in in another cartoon on his mother while she bathes, and she covers her nude body

in horrified modesty. He tells another friend, this is my mom, Tommy. Isn't she pretty? There are a bunch of comics like this, of Dennis walking in on his mom when she's like, indecent, and talking about how hot she is to his friends weird joke to make About your wife and kid Hank. Yeah weird joke to make about your wife and kid That is uncomfortable as like a cartoonist and a parent

I just don't think I could do that Look any kid would be glad to be portrayed as making a crude sap to beat people with a street No kid wants to be in a cartoon calling their mom hot. That's not okay. Hank, you shouldn't do that to the cartoon. Found it in the image of your son, a little odd. Yeah. Like I know she was your wife, but not his.

That's a therapy session. He will say later, I think Dennis was more based on me than my son, but still man, little fucked up buddy. So that's good. As soon as he starts making a fortune off of this cartoon, and we know this cartoon that is inspired by his son and his wife, he grows to resent them. In one interview he described how he empathized with the put-upon father in his cartoon.

He comes home tired, full of other thoughts, and it's hard to come back and relax enough to enjoy your family, he says. The young Ketchum saw children, in particular his son Dennis, as part of the problem. They always seem to be in the way of what you wanted to do, he remembers. I just wonder if this is when his ghost artists and ghost writers start taking over. Not quite. This is right at the start. They haven't done this yet. Yeah, this is 59. So Wise was not drawing and I can't remember the name of the writer he had. No, not quite yet.

This is like, this is, I think him being like sad in retrospect, because at the time I think he was just happy to ignore his family to make a bunch of money. And as a result, his marriage deteriorates quickly for reasons that should be obvious. In the winter of 1959, Alice leaves him and he simply writes, it was a bummer. We had been on a collision course and nobody cared.

Jesus. We're going to talk about what happens to his wife and more importantly, what he does to his son in the wake of the very sad thing that's going to happen to her. And we're getting into the very worst bastardry of the Hank Ketchum story. But first, that's the episode we're done for right now. So come back for the rest. I'm sorry, did I cause this to be a two-parter? I didn't mean that.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I caused this to be a two-parter because I wrote 20 pages on the Dennis the Menace guy. Jesus, what? Jesus, what? Wrong one. No one will ever be able to explain. This was not my initial intention. I did not, oh my Jesus.

Well, you know, obviously not like compared to you, I'm not knowledgeable or nerdy about animation, but like I really love cartoons. Like I'm wanting to be a cartoonist. Well, I just didn't realize for 20 pages worth of rage to have it, I can't catch them. That's why I was just. There's so much to talk, like the Disney animator strike

and shit, the history of animation, like I just couldn't, I couldn't help myself. You could do a whole episode on Disney in the 40s, especially the strike. I think we will at some point, but first let's do an episode on your pluggables. Oh, oh well, my name is Randy Melholland and I do an online comic called Something Positive.

I've been doing it since the year 2001. Let's see, what else do I do? I do a few things. Now, Randy, 2001, The War on Terror started and it hasn't really ended. Is it possible that your cartoon caused the War on Terror? Technically, my comic started after the War on Terror began. Okay, okay. I have a few months grace period, thankfully. I can tell you where I was when all that started.

I guess it'll remain a mystery why the War on Terror started then. At least until you're due about the Behind the Bastards episode on me. Next year Randy Mill Holland The 14th hijacker I forget how many hijackers that were folks. I did live in Boston, you know I live not far from that from Logan That allowed all that to happen

I so I do something positive at somethingpositive.net. I also draw the Sunday Popeye strips, comicskingdom.com slash Popeye. I also do a Tuesday, Thursday comic with a woman, sorry, being named Emmy Burke. That's all in Popeye. Tuesdays are focused on all of, that's what Emmy draws. I do the Thursday strips that focus on Popeye and his family.

And I started a couple months ago, a comic called Mouse Trapped. It is my sequel to the comic, or the cartoon, the Steamboat Willie, but I bring in other public domain comic characters from like Universal and Walter Lantz. Hell yeah. So it's basically my excuse to pull out

really old forgotten cartoon characters and figure out how they would fit together. Well, that sounds fucking dope. Thank you. Yeah, I don't have a cartoon, but I do have a podcast and you're listening to it. So why would I need to say anymore? Novels? I have written a novel.

It's called After the Revolution and you can find it on the internet at atrbook.com or any place that lets you buy books, you know? Don't you have one of those stacked things that writers have? A substate, nah, I don't really do that anymore. Oh, okay, sorry. I mean, I wanna get some sort of regular writing thing up again, but substate, there's this whole thing

over Nazis and like I'm mixed because aren't there Nazis on social media? Why would we get bent out of shape about one or the other? But also like, I don't know. I don't want to go to bat for sub stack over whatever all of this. So I'm just not doing anything right now, aside from these podcasts. Fair enough. Yeah. Well, don't forget Colzone media and the app.

Yeah. Yeah. Don't forget that, but Cool Zone Media and the app. Yeah, yeah. Don't forget that, but forget everything else you've ever heard in your life. Remember only us. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the 1980s and 90s, New York City needed a tough cop like Detective Luis Garcela. Putting bad guys away. There's no feeling like it in the world.

He was the guy who made sure the worst killers were brought to justice. That's one version. This guy is a piece of shit. Derek Hamilton was put away from murder by Detective Scarcella. In prison, Derek turned himself into the best jailhouse lawyer of his generation. And the law was my girlfriend.

This is my only way to freedom. Derrick and other convicted murderers started a law firm behind bars. We never knew we had the same cop in the case. Scarcella. We got to show that he's a corrupt cop. They can go f*** themselves. I'm C. Fishman.

And I'm Dax Devlin Ross. And this is The Burden. Listen to new episodes of The Burden on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive bonus content, subscribe to True Crime Clubhouse on Apple Podcast. Everyone in our country has a voice. It's something that says not just where you come from, but who you are.

Welcome to NPR's Black Stories, Black Truths, a collection of podcasts and a celebration of the hosts in journalism who've always spoken truth to power. Our voices are as varied, nuanced, and dynamic as the Black experience, and stories should never be about us without us. Find NPR Black Stories, Black Truths on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. What up? I am Drammo's host of the Life as a Gringo podcast.

This is a show for the no-sabo kids, the 200 percenters. Here we celebrate your otherness and embrace living in the gray area. This is a show for the NoSobbo kids, the 200 percenters. Here we celebrate your otherness and embrace living in the gray area. Every Tuesday I'll be bringing you conversations around personal growth, issues affecting the Latin community, and much more. Then every Thursday I'll be tackling trending stories and current events from our community. Listen to Life as a Gringo on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.