Dennis remained close to and engaged with his family during his college and grad school years, 1963-1968. This seems to be the period in his life when he was the most open and most personally creative as well. And happy. He built Heathkit receivers to listen to the Beatles and WBAI radio, he read Playboy, he made original art that he gave as Christmas presents.
During Christmas holiday 1964, the Ritchie siblings (Lynn, John, Bill) conjured up the idea that our family had an alter-ego secret superhero life as the Legion of Super Diseases (LOSD). Somehow we roped Dennis in to this, we got him to commit to creating an LOSD comic book origin story, which he labored over and finally delivered in July 1965.