Archive: Family Circus

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Crankshaft, 10/24/26

Crankshaft, no longer satisfied to merely irritate his neighbors with occasional billowing clouds of smoke during grilling season, is now hoping to more effectively poison them by simply pumping out gasoline fumes for hours on end.

Family Circus, 10/24/26

Wrong, Dolly! Kangaroos are nonhuman animals and feel no sense of patriotism; they can flourish in environments with a wide range of temperatures so long as there are plentiful grasses and shrubs for them to eat and no large carnivores who might prey upon them.

Bizarro, 10/24/26

Most turkeys that Americans will be eating this holiday season will have lived their entire lives inside the factory farm where they will also meet their demise. You might be inside a factory farm right now, li’l poult! Make a break for it! Try to get outside and never look back!

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Family Circus, 9/30/26

God damn but Gary looks smug here. “That’s right, Mrs. K.! My parents love me, but they don’t love each other … and they’re engaged in a constant but unspoken game of mutual oneupmanship for my affections. The two rooms are just the beginning! I’m really sitting in the catbird seat here! Uh, by which I mean, I see Billy has a lovely home. Just the one, obviously.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/30/26

“We were just taking in the fall colors! Like, uh, green! Green is a color, and it’s fall, so I guess it’s a fall color? I guess it’s fall? What month is it? What year is it? Where am I? Why am I here? Oh, it’s Mud Mountain Murphy! Are you gonna play ‘Muddy Boots?’ I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that you play ‘Muddy Boots.’”

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Hi and Lois, 9/27/26

My first impression reading this was that Hi seems so youthful in the first panel in the second row that he must be imagining himself as a Little Leaguer; but the mustache on the outfielder means that’s not right, and I realized that, of course, he’s imagining himself as a Major League Baseball player, and MLB players are on average men in their mid to late 20s, younger than Hi and certainly much younger than me, but not children by any means. It’s a lot to think about! And I honestly would prefer to think about this, to muse melancholy on middle age, and not think at all about the throwaway panel that includes what I guess is supposed to be Hi dozing off thinking happy thoughts but it looks like a portrait of JFK zooted out of his mind on all the off-label drugs they were giving him for his back pain plus whatever sex pills he was taking. I have to admit, not thinking about that is getting more and more difficult.

Family Circus, 9/27/26

We criticize Marvin a lot for all the piss and shit jokes it does, but honestly its worst sin is just to be so in your face about it. Like, here’s a Family Circus about a carpet remembering all the good times it’s had with the Keane Kids over the years as it’s being driven to the landfill, and only one of the seven little vignettes it’s visualizing involves being peed on. That’s how you elicit a healthy chuckle from the piss joke appreciating community while still getting grandparents to faithfully cut your comic and hang it on the fridge.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 9/27/26

You ever notice that we never see Leroy’s mother? I feel like Loretta gets mad at moments like this not just for the obvious reasons, but because Leroy’s mother’s presumably early death — or perhaps her decision to go no-contact with her son for reasons we could easily guess at — have denied Loretta ammunition in the constant marital battle that is the focus of her every waking thought.

Crankshaft, 9/27/26

Hey, I don’t want to overstep here, but … do you ever get the feeling that, just maybe, everyone involved in the creation of the Funkyverse strips has a terrible inability to feel pleasure, like in a pathological way? Just putting that out there.