To mark his 75th birthday on the 17th March, and also just coz I like them, it’s the UK’s Dennis the Menace and his dog Gnasher (a more sprightly 58 years old) from the front cover of their 1997 Annual. The image is a sentimental favourite, as I received the book for my 10th Birthday in December 1996, but also the best image I could find of them at a cursory glance.
For those who don’t know Annuals are a type of picture-heavy book in (mostly) the UK and Commonwealth that come out in the lead up to Christmas and carry the date of the following year, primarily marketed as potential Christmas gifts for children, with the idea, I suppose, being that they should hold some interest for them through much of the following year. They are probably most famously associated with Children’s Comics like Rupert the Bear, The Beano (Dennis and Gnasher’s Home), Jackie and The Dandy, but there are also Annuals that are tie-ins with TV Show, films, music acts etc. As with most things literary they were bigger in the 20th Century, but they are still around