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Ketcham started in the business as an animator for Walter Lantz and eventually Walt Disney, where he worked on Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi, and several Donald Duck shorts.

During World War II, Ketcham was a photographic specialist with the U.S. Navy Reserve. He also created the character Mr. Hook for the Navy during World War II, and four cartoons were made (one by Walter Lantz Productions, in color, and three by Warner Bros. Cartoons, in black and white). Also, while in the Navy, he began a camp newspaper strip, Half Hitch, which ran in The Saturday Evening Post beginning in 1943.

After World War II, he settled in Carmel, California, and began work as a freelance cartoonist. In 1951, he started Dennis the Menace, based on his own four-year-old son Dennis. Ketcham was in his studio in October 1950, when his first wife, Alice, burst into the studio and complained that their four-year-old, Dennis, had wrecked his bedroom instead of napping. "Your son is a menace," she shouted.

Within five months, 16 newspapers began carrying the adventures of the impish but innocent "Dennis the Menace". By May 1953, 193 newspapers in the United States and 52 abroad were carrying the strip to 30 million readers.

The comic strip became so successful that it was adapted to other popular media, including several television shows, both live-action and animated, and several feature films, including theatrical and direct-to-video releases.

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