David Sutherland

Who is David Sutherland?

David Sutherland is an artist with DC Thomson, responsible for The Bash Street Kids, Dennis the Menace, Fred's Bed for The Beano, and the second version of Jak for The Dandy in the early 2000s. He started out as an adventure strip artist, drawing strips such as The Beano's The Great Flood of London in 1960-61 and Billy the Cat, before replacing Leo Baxendale as the artist for The Bash Street Kids, who were given the two pages in the centre of the comic at the same time. He has been the strip's main artist since then, during which time he has drawn more than 2000 individual strips for the weekly comic. He also replaced Dudley D. Watkins on Biffo the Bear after his death in 1969, and continued to draw the character through the 1970s, after his strip relinquished that cover of the comic to Dennis in 1974.

In 1977, Gnasher was given his own strip in the Beano, Gnasher's Tale, which like the main Dennis strip was drawn by Sutherland. Similarly, when Dennis's pet pig, Rasher, received his own page in 1984, Sutherland was again the strip's artist, as he was when Gnasher's Tale was replaced by Gnasher and Gnipper in 1986.