Ivy, better known as Ivy the Terrible is a four-year-old girl who annoys her parents with her misbehaviour.
Personality[]
Ivy can be compared to that of an average toddler in that she is extremely quick to anger and is prone to pulling temper tantrums when things are not quite going her way. She can at times be purposefully malicious, for example stamping on her father's toes but most of the time it appears much of her deeds are all done by some fun which has gone out of hand. She has been seen to have a thirst to prove herself, for example, her introductory strip in which she challenges Dennis the Menace to a fight. She seems to have a fairly strong friendship with Dennis' younger sister Bea and is on talking terms with Minnie the Minx and Toots. Like Bea, Minnie and Toots, she appears to be a tomboy. Even once where she, Minnie and Toots were not allowed to be tomboyish and caused trouble acting feminine before they were allowed to be tomboys again. Diego Jourdan's strips reveal Ivy has a love for horror films as she is watching Scream on her living room television.
Concept and History[]
In 1985, Beano editor Euan Kerr wrote to artist Robert Nixon about his plans for a new character, a four year-old girl dressed in dungarees with bunches in her hair ''who would like to be tough and menacing like Dennis and Minnie, but doesn't have the strength or maturity to carry it off''. The comic's staff were delighted by Nixon's preliminary drawings of the character and Ivy made her first appearance in The Beano in issue 2233 (4th May 1985). Ivy's first strip focused on her attempt to become the toughest character in the comic. She confronted Dennis the Menace, who simply waited until the evening, by which time Ivy had fallen asleep. Taking her back to her house, Dennis uncharacteristically commented that she ''almost looked cute''. She proved very popular with Beano readers, with future Beano editor Alan Digby attributing her success to Nixon's artwork, and this led to the strip being expanded to two pages in 1998.
Nixon continued to draw Ivy until his death in 2002, with replacement artist Tony O'Donnell drawing it in a very similar style to Nixon, with no significant changes to the story or characters. O'Donnell continued to draw the strip until March 2007, when the comic began running reprints of Nixon stories from the 1989-1998. These reprints continued until August 2008, when the comic strip merged with Bea and the combined strip, titled Bea and Ivy, was drawn by Nigel Parkinson. This lasted for one year until Dennis the Menace was revamped to match the style of the new TV series and Ivy was split up from Bea, with the comic again running reprints of Nixon's work, but this time using two page stories from 1998-2002. In October 2010, the strip came out of reprints when it was taken over by a new artist, Diego Jourdan, although this run was comparatively short ended early the following year. She later returned in 2014, drawn by Lew Stringer, with this series continuing until 2017.
Ivy's strips in the 2008 and 2009 Beano annuals were drawn by Steve Horrocks, with Dave Eastbury providing artwork for the 2011 Beano annual and Laura Howell drawing her story in the 2012 annual.
Ivy reappeared as an adult in the 2024 annual.
Physical appearance[]
Ivy sports two pigtails on her jet-black messy hair and a single tooth in her mouth. Her usual apparel mainly consists of a yellow fleece jumper under red dungarees with blue play shoes. However, she has occasionally worn blue dungarees with a red fleece jumper. She appears short and stocky but in fact holds rather a lot of strength for someone so young.
Gallery[]
