That Time Dennis the Menace’s Dad Brought Him to a Strip Club

Remember the famous comic strip where Charlie Brown and the rest of the Peanuts gang snuck into a porno theater?

Of course not, because that would be an insane thing to print in the funny pages next to wholesome, family-friendly cartoons. But, somehow, the maniacs behind Dennis the Menace managed to slip in a frame of the famous 5-year-old accidentally ratting out his old man for seemingly taking his son to a strip club, which Dennis thought was the zoo.

“Women come out and don’t do anything” is a pretty vague description to slip by the censors, but it’s pretty clear by the sweat beads erupting from Mr. Mitchell’s forehead that this wasn’t a place that a mother would want her husband taking a literal kindergartener. While we haven’t been able to identify the exact year in which this strip was printed, it’s safe to say that dads of that decade had a much looser grasp on what constitutes an inappropriate formative sexual experience.

Needless to say, this frame is a completely unexpected entry in the 70-year-old syndicated comic strip that chronicles the family-friendly misadventures of Kansas’ Tom Sawyer. On the plus side (???), depending on the date of publication, this could be one of the earliest examples of a cartoon sneaking a dirty joke over the heads of its younger audience. 

Either way, we’re still combing through the Dennis the Menace archive to see if there's a strip where Dennis finds his mom’s “back massager.”