Saturday, November 7, 2015

A phantom menace... named Dennis

It's tricky to put Dennis side-by-side with real people and not have him look freakish.

Today's Dennis the Menace, pictured above left, offers a most intriguing alternate timeline: Dennis Mitchell need never have been born at all. Imagine that world. George Wilson, 30 pounds lighter and sporting a full head of chestnut-colored hair, would be enjoying an active and inventive sex life with his wife, Martha. Their coupling would be so loud, in fact, that it could be easily overheard by their childless neighbors, Henry and Alice Mitchell, whose marriage would still be as cold and loveless as it is now. Oh, yeah. They were always a bad couple. Dennis' birth just exacerbated an already-terrible situation.