Dennis & the Skull

Something unusual to report: I saw a Dennis the Menace comic panel the other day that was actually a little funny. In it, Dennis and Mr. Wilson are standing on what I take to be Wilson's front porch, looking up at a heavy snow fall. Wilson says, "There seems to be more winter than we need this year."

Never cared much one way or the other about Dennis. His was a comic that was just there, neither very funny most of the time nor particularly stupid. But when I was seven or eight, old enough to read the caption, I had a vivid encounter with a parody of the comic, one that impressed me much more than any of the actual panels. It was in Mad magazine. Dennis was holding a skull. The caption was something like this: "Hey, Dad, look what I found in Mr. Wilson's head!"

I must have had a healthy fear of skulls at the time. The cartoon gave me the creeps so bad that I can visualize the panel even now, though the creepiness has drained away with age.