David Law was born and raised in Edinburgh, and gained a diploma at the city's College of Art. His career as an illustrator started at Odhams Press, but in the early 1930's he joined the staff of D.C. Thomson in Dundee.

 

Orignally he drew cartoons for local newspapers such as the Evening Telegraph, which featured. He created Dennis the Menace in 1951, and later followed this up with Beryl the Peril for the Topper and the Dandy's Corporal Clott (12th November 1960).

 

Law's style changed considerably over his years with Thomson's. Early Dennis strips featured short, squat characters and tidy artwork. Through the fifties, though, with characters becoming taller and sketchier.

 

The most peculiar change came in the middle of that decade, and occurred when the Beryl the Peril strip changed from 5 rows per page to 4 rows. Seemingly flummoxed by the challenge of changing the perspective within each frame, he simply drew all the characters much taller and thinner. (I could be being unfair here, but that's definitely how it seemed... I'll post the evidence when I get time.) He then carried this elongated style over to Dennis for a while, before eventually returning the characters to more normal proportions. (These strange vaccilations are even referred to in Dennis's 1991 40th anniversary issue.)

In 1970 Law was taken seriously ill. This must have been quite sudden, as all his three of his strips were all taken over by different artists for the issues dated August 1st. Although made a partial recovery and returned to the Beano for a while in 1971, he passed away in April that year at the age of 63.