Over the years, there has been a variety of subsidiary characters.
Dennis's family Dennis is the main character of the strip. Badly behaved and visually rebellious, Dennis uses a wide range of pranks and weaponry in order to cause chaos and mayhem to those around him. He is recognised by his scruffy black hair and red-and-black jumper.
Dad appeared in the first strip. His real name has never been given (although once it was cited as actually being "Dennis's Dad" in a letter by Dennis). He also appears in both
Bea and
Gnasher and Gnipper. The real name of his wife,
Mum, has also never been given (again in the same letter, it was stated that her actual name is "Dennis's Mum", though in the 2020 annual, the mayor called her Sandra). In the 2012 revamp, he was redrawn to look more like Dennis. This was explained in 2015 as
Dad now being the grown-up version of the 1980s Dennis the Menace, making the original Dad the new Dennis' grandfather.
Bea is Dennis's little sister, born in issue 2931, dated 19 September 1998. She has her own strip (
Bea, originally
Beaginnings) and sometimes appears in
Dennis the Menace and Gnasher. Bea wears a stripy yellow and black vest, this is a pun on her name as the colours are the same as the colours on a
Bumble bee.
Granny is Dennis's and Bea's 80-year-old grandmother. In the late 1980s/early 1990s, she got her own strip
Go, Granny, Go! drawn by
Brian Walker. This transformed her from the indulgent Granny who used the Demon Whacker when necessary to a very active elderly lady who enjoyed motorbikes, similar to
Cuddles and Dimples's granny, partly because, by this time, characters in
The Beano were no longer punished with the slipper. She also appeared regularly in the 2009 TV series and 2017 TV series.
Denise is Dennis's cousin, who bears a striking resemblance to
Beryl the Peril, although she also wears a red-and-black striped jumper. She appeared in just a few stories, visiting along with her cat
Santa Claws. She generally managed to out-menace Dennis, showing considerable fortitude against the Softies, and at the local boxing club. Santa Claws also appeared in a
Roger the Dodger strip in the 2008
Beano Annual.
Animals Gnasher is (an "
Abyssinian wire-haired tripehound") who first appeared in issue 1363, dated 31 August 1968. He has extremely strong teeth that can leave teeth marks in seemingly anything and enjoys chasing postmen. His name comes from the British slang for teeth (gnashers), which in turn comes from the French
ganache meaning "jowl", a word also used in chocolate manufacture. In the first-ever Dennis the Menace strip, the family also had a
Scottish Terrier, who has not since appeared. Since 1986, Gnasher has had a son,
Gnipper, who appears with him in the separate strip (
Gnasher and Gnipper). Gnipper is owned by Dennis the Menace. He first appeared in issue 2286, dated 10 May 1986 after a story arc in which Gnasher went missing, this story arc was reprinted in the
Dennis the Menace Annual 1990 as a 16-page story entitled ''Who's Gnicked Gnasher?''. Gnipper's name is a pun since 'to nip' (something) means to give something a small bite, while 'nipper' is a slang term for a young child. Gnasher also has several daughters:
Gnatasha,
Gnaomi,
Gnanette,
Gnorah and
Gnancy, although these are rarely seen. Gnatasha had her own strip in
The Beezer and
Topper, and appeared in the Beezer Book 1994. Gnasher also used to have another strip, ''
Gnasher's Tale'', which began in 1977 and continued for nine years until the title was changed to
Gnasher and Gnipper following Gnipper's introduction.
Rasher is a pig, first seen in issue 1920, dated 5 May 1979. He loves to eat swill and he was rescued by Dennis. Rasher also has children:
Oink,
Snort,
Grunt,
Squeal, and
Squeak. He used to have his own strip called
Rasher, which started in 1984 and appeared regularly for four years before making sporadic appearances until 1995, Rasher's strip also appeared for a few weeks in 2010. He was believed to have been dropped after the strip was revamped in 2009, but he made a surprise return to the strip in 2011. Dennis has been seen with his pet
spider called
Dasher. He first appeared in about 1987, as a tool to scare Walter, and was the mascot of the
Beano website when it launched in 1997. Originally, the spider was all black, but when it reappeared in 1997, it was red and black, matching Dennis's jersey. He appeared a few times from 1997 to 2008 and then reappeared in the 2011 and 2016 Halloween issues.
Other children Dennis has historically had two main friends:
Curly (real name
Crispin Lee Shepherd), who has a lot of strawberry-blonde, curly hair, was the first to appear, debuting months after the strip started in 1951. Although Curly and Dennis get into many fights, they still remain the best of friends. Then there is
Pieface (real name
Kevin Peter Shepherd), whose favourite food is pies. Dennis, Gnasher, Curly and Pieface were collectively called "The Menaces"; they were all in a band called Dennis and the Dinmakers. Pieface currently has his own strip in
The Beano as well as his 'pet' Paul the Potato. They are both by Nigel Auchterlounie and Diego Jourdan. Since the 2017 revamp of the Dennis feature, Curly moved away and seems to have largely disappeared. In his place as fellow Menaces are two girls,
Rubidium von Screwtop (from
The Beano's 'Rubi's Screwtop Science' strip) and
Jemima Jones (from the comic's 'JJ's Jokes' strip). Despite Dennis' perception of girls as soppy in earlier years, he accepts the tech-minded Rubi and tough, often prankish JJ as his friends. During the 1980s, a third boy known as "Toadface McGurty" was also one of Dennis' friends. The rival gang to the Menaces is the
Softies, a group of kids who rather than being bratty, traditionally enjoy refined things such as
teddy bears,
dolls and
flowers. The most famous Softy—Dennis's greatest sworn enemy—is
Walter, sometimes called the "Prince of Softies" in earlier years. He has a pet
poodle called
Foo-Foo. The two most other frequently seen Softies are
Bertie Blenkinsop and '''Algernon 'Spotty' Perkins
. Other Softies, seen less often, have included Bennie Benry
, Sweet William
, Dudley Nightshirt
, Jeremy Snodgrass
, Softy Matthew
, Softy Pal Erasmus
, Lisping Lester
, and Nervous Rex''', who is scared of everything and everyone.
Matilda, Walter's girlfriend introduced in the 1996 TV series, was presumably a Softy, though her forceful attitude toward Walter suggested otherwise. For a brief time in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Dennis' friend
Curly was also presented as a Softy.
Other characters The
Colonel is an old army colonel, who is often seen with toy soldiers and often makes references to being in battles which happened hundreds of years ago. In an episode of the 2009 TV series, entitled 'The Trial', his first name was revealed to be Godfrey.
Sergeant Slipper is the police sergeant who is always trying to catch Dennis for menacing. In the 1960s, a well-known police officer was known as
Slipper of the Yard, though "slipper" is also a nod to the instrument with which Dennis's father usually chastised him, before attitudes toward corporal punishment against children changed. '''Dennis's Teacher'
often appeared in Dennis the Menace'' strips from the early 1970s and has been replaced, although the character was absent for most of the intervening period, in the 2009 TV Series by another Teacher named
Mrs Creecher.
Nasty Norman was a bully often seen as Dennis's rival.
Stanley Livingstone, an explorer with a pet crocodile,
Carruthers, who lived next door to Dennis. Seemingly replaced by the Colonel, though the character had disappeared a while before the Colonel first appeared. His name alludes to the explorers
David Livingstone and
H.M. Stanley. ==In other media==