Beryl the Peril appeared in the first issue of "The Topper" in 1953. She was created to be a female equivalent to "The Beano"'s Dennis the Menace. Davey Law, her artist and creator, drew inspiration from his daughter, who would often pull faces during her tantrums. The strips were similar in concept to the Dennis the Menace ones in that she would cause chaos through menacing her neighbours, parents and school teachers. In 1958, Beryl was chosen as one of the few of D.C. Thomson's characters to earn an annual all to herself, consisting solely from reprints in past years. When Law retired
Comic Cavalcade the time. It was priced at 15 cents, when the average comic cost a dime. Many stories in "Comic Cavalcade" were scripted by other than the characters' regular writers, for deadline reasons. Batman writer Bill Finger, for example, would occasionally write Flash stories for "Comic Cavalcade" when regular Flash writer Gardner Fox was preoccupied with other projects. One non-superhero ongoing character introduced in "Comic Cavalcade" was newspaperman Johnny Peril. His roots, prior to his first appearance, came in the one-off story "Just a Story" in issue #15 (July 1946), by writer-artist Howard Purcell. With issue #22 (Sept. 1947), the anthological