Alan Moore’s The Show Is A Live-Action Dennis The Menace Movie

We’ve talked about The Show, the movie by Alan Moore and Mitch Jenkins available for free on Amazon Freevee in the UK and paid streaming services elsewhere. But there’s one aspect I had never touched upon for spoilerage purposes, but now may be a reason for people to see the film. There’s a very specific reference to a very specific comic book character in The Show that I thought set up a great reveal as to their identity. Still, many people I have talked to missed it, especially if they are not British.

I am considering an Annotations/Glossary thing for The Show (and if anyone wants to participate, let me know!), but this was the big one.

Tom Burke plays an assassin sent to Northampton to fulfill a job for some very nasty people. He has jet black spiky hair. We later learn his name is Fletcher Dennis. Halfway through the film, he takes his jacket off to reveal a black and red striped top. His assassination weapon of choice is the catapult.

He’s the grown-up Dennis The Menace. And Alan Moore made a live-action film of Dennis without infringing any DC Thompson copyright.

The British Dennis The Menace, of course. There was a coincidental development of two characters of the same name launching in their own publications on each side of the pond on the same day. In the UK, Dennis The Menace was created by David Law in the comic book anthology The Beano. The British version is considerably nastier, a badly behaved schoolboy and often a downright bully who gets his just desserts. Mostly.

Talking about this, I just bumped into the current Dennis The Menace artist for the past ten years (with a five-year stint previous to that), Nigel Parkinson, at the London Film And Comic-Con, who told me “clearly Dennis The Menace is such a recognisable character in British pop culture, we all know who it’s meant to be.” But it may be some people who need a little help.