10 Comics Villains Who Secretly Mirrored The Hero
2. Dennis's Dad / Dennis The Menace
Okay, so the Beano's Dennis the Menace is not exactly a superhero, and his father is far from a villain. However, the two have been at loggerheads for almost seventy years. Since 1951, Dennis and his Dad (also named Dennis) have been repeating the same vicious cycle of pranks and punishment.
Until recently, readers didn't relaise exactly how much of a vicious cycle this really was.
In 2015, a strip in the Beano flashed back to Dennis Sr's childhood in the 1980s. This revealed that he used to look and act exactly like his son, and had a similar adversarial relationship with his father.
Could this mean the Dennis that children loved in the 80s grew up to be the stick-in-the-mud father of the modern day Menace? The Beano's Editor-In-Chief, Mike Stirling, confirmed that this is exactly what it means. In fact, Dennis Sr. wasn't even the first young menace to hold the mantle: it stands to reason that HIS father was the original 1950s Dennis.
The Beano is the world's longest-running weekly comic, with over 4000 issues under its belt, and it shows no signs of ending any time soon. This can only mean the cycle will continue indefinitely, and many more Dennises will grow up to raise Dennises of their own.