Thank you all for your thoughts and knowledge and wonderful art samples. I had intended to add more scans of my own, but I don't think I have anything that can match what has been shared so far.
The Great Flood Of London is superb.
I grew up with the 1980's Dennis and I love that robust era of the Menace too.
Peter just beat me to it in pointing out that Sutherland taking over the Bash Street Kids seems to coincide with the number of pupils in class IIb shrinking suddenly. Maybe the parents of the other kids moved away to get their darlings away from Danny & co.'s baleful influence.
DS's 1970s annual covers are great. 1975 is a special favourite.
Yes, in those early Bash Street Kids episodes Mr Sutherland inserted so many wonderful incidental sight gags, just like Baxendale, Paterson, and Geering at their best. Witness in one of the strips above the Headmaster secretly using Teacher's tears to water a plant. I wonder how many of these were in the original scripts.
One of my favourite comic books ever was and is the Bash Street Kids book 1982 (the second one) which was my first glimpse at reprints of that glorious era of the strip. Those strips repay rereading and rereading and gazing at in wonder. The fact that there is only one Leo Baxendale (my favourite UK comics artist too) doesn't lessen Mr Sutherland's achievement.
It took me a while as a kid to figure out if those strips were drawn by the same artist as the ones appearing in my weekly 1980's Beano. I was surprised when I found out they were.
It's maybe poor form to link to something only to disagree with it, but I vehemently disagree with this writers assessment of David Sutherland (or of David Law, for that matter):
http://www.paulmorris.co.uk/beano/artis ... erland.htm
Particularly this phrase: "Whether David Sutherland ever had a distinctive style of his own I may never know."
His work of the 80's and onwards is definitely in his own distinctive style. As the writer himself admits, the Bash Street Kids and Dennis the Menace no longer looked like they were drawn by two different people. In other words, they no longer looked like they were drawn by Baxendale and Law, they both looked like they were drawn by David Sutherland. Just because his style evolved from Baxendale/Law pastiches, and just because it's not a style the writer admires, doesn't make it any less distinctive in the end. And once you're aware of his style, it's easy to spot the similarities in one of his Billy the Cat strips.
How about a complete list of his strips then?
Danny on a Dolphin
The Cannonball Crackshots
The Great Flood Of London
The Bash Street Kids
Lester's Little Circus
General Jumbo
Billy the Cat
Biffo the Bear
Dennis the Menace
Gnasher's Tale/Gnasher and Gnipper
Rasher
The Germs
Korky the Cat
Bradley Bedsock (was that his name?)
Fred's Bed
Any more? And were they all for The Beano except Korky and Bradley?
Long live the Great David Sutherland!
My favourite Beano cover by David..loved the eyes having colour..a nice painted effect..
Heres my signature of David...I do like his work a lot..
