Retro Fan #40 September 2025 (magazine review).

Another 1960s or so mix with the 40^th edition of ‘Retro Fan’. This time, writer Mark Voger looks at the American ‘Dennis The Menace’ TV series based off Hank Ketcham’s comicbook. I think we had a couple of episodes shown over here, but it wasn’t our Dennis the Menace, so I wasn’t that interested. Our Dennis was seen in ‘The Beano’, who really was a menace. I looked up and compared the two characters a few years back and found both comic book characters had come out in the same month in 1951, so there was no copyright conflict. Here there was an interview with actor Jay North (1951-2025), who played the American Dennis for four years, about his abuse by his aunt and uncle during filming and the lack of care after and how he helped to instigate better care for child actors and their earnings.

Writer Carol M. Ford’s look at ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ (1965-1971) was a little padded out with several repetitions in a large article but fills in a lot of gaps for me. I recall seeing a few episodes in the UK but not many. I’m still puzzling over how some of its American audience couldn’t tell the difference between a POW (prisoner of war) camp and a concentration camp. It wasn’t as though there weren’t several POW camp films out by then. It was at least reassuring that the pilot was shown to some WW2 veterans to check they weren’t offended by it, or they would have stopped filming.

Writer Scott Shaw! has a look at ‘Circus Boy’ (1956-58) and how it changed its lead actor, Mickey Braddock, aka Mickey Dolenz, when he got the lead at 10 years old. I saw a lot of the episodes in reruns when I was very young in the UK. I think my parents even bought me an annual at the time. What child wouldn’t dream of belonging to a circus? Authors Enid Blyton and Paul Gallico used circuses in their stories from time to time. The reality was far different, and Dolenz underplays it in his autobiography, but he learnt a lot from his time on the show and was very grounded.

Writer and collector Keith Manzella looks at his own collection of ‘Lost In Space’ robots and how Remco did them in a variety of coloured plastic, making the variants collectable. I can’t recall seeing them over here, but I think the purist in me would have objected to them not having the right colour.

One show I never saw was ‘Have Gun, Will Travel’ (1957-1963). Writer Will Murray goes into its history when it was originally going to be contemporary for its time, but producers wanted it in the Western period, ignoring the time it would take mail to travel then, and just used a fade-out to patch the gap. Star Richard Boone only wanted to stay on the show for five seasons, but the studio offered a lot of money for one extra season.

Writer Andy Mangels looks at all things Hulk, mostly in animation and, briefly, TV series and films. Other than the last two, I can’t recall any of the others being shown over here, let alone She-Hulk joining up. Something I would add here concerns how the Hulk gets clothes when he reverts to Banner. In the comic books, it was revealed he had stretch trousers so he didn’t lose his dignity, but he also had some money stitched into them and, hopefully, a nearby thrift shop to get some more shirts and shoes. In this day and age, presumably, it would be a cash card that would be hidden away.

 I wish writer Scott Saavedra was a little more honest in his appraisal of Whitman’s ‘Big Little Books’ and actually called them tat. Yes, people do collect rubbish material for completeness’ sake, but even he was trying to keep cool about just how bad these media tie-in books were.