David Law (1908 – April 1971) was a Scottish cartoonist best known for creating Dennis the Menace and Beryl the Peril for Dundee publishers D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd .
Due to British comics being printed several days before distribution to newsagents (bearing the date of the following week to give them a longer shelf life), it seems beyond dispute that the UK Dennis saw print before Hank Ketcham's identically named Dennis the Menace, which began syndication in the USA on 12 March 1951.
Law's Dennis was a juvenile anti-hero, uncontrollable and destructive, drawn in spontaneous, edgy lines, and was an immediate hit; the strip eventually displaced Biffo the Bear on the comic's full colour front cover in 1974.
Law went on to create Beryl the Peril, a similarly anarchic female character, for the Topper in 1953, and the accident-prone soldier Corporal Clott for The Dandy in 1960.
He was taken ill in 1970, and his strips were taken over by other artists, including David Sutherland on Dennis the Menace and John Dallas on Beryl the Peril.