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Archive: Family Circus

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Doc Pritchart has never heard of Pagliacci and wouldn’t recommend this costume

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/29/24

No. Sorry. Call me a coastal flatlander elitist if you must, but I do not buy today’s Barney Google and Snuffy Smith on any level. First of all, Hootin’ Holler’s access to mass media is limited to the radio and Parson Tuttle’s TV set; there would simply not be any local demand for the superhero franchise characters who make up the bulk of store-bought Halloween costumes, and Silas, the only local storekeeper, would certainly not bother to stock them. And you’re trying to tell me that Jughaid would actually enjoy the idea of a costume that by its very nature transforms mocking laughter into chuckles of approval? Utter nonsense. I’m sorry, but nobody in this blighted community is operating on that level of semiotic sophistication.

Gasoline Alley, 10/29/24

The history of humankind’s quest to create thinking machines has repeatedly produced surprises, where we discover that the capabilities that we bundle together as “intelligence” are separable, and some of the ones that we previously thought of as “advanced” are easier to implement via computers than ones we thought of as “basic.” In the 20th century, for instance, we wrote programs that could perform complex mathematics and achieve grandmaster level in chess, but the ability to operate robotic legs or process simple visual input proved impossible on the hardware at the time. Today, we have so-called “AIs” whose ability to produce fully fluent speech in human languages has outpaced its ability to tell us anything useful or real, with chatbots like ChatGPT cheerfully providing bullshit answers and made-up references that nevertheless sound exactly like a person wrote them. What I’m trying to say is that, since Google’s Gemini AI told people to eat glue and ChatGPT got lawyers fined by a judge, I find it fully believable that Arty would tell these little children that they don’t have to wear a seatbelt, right before he throws a switch and accelerates so fast that he smears them all over the inside of the saucer, but I don’t think he’d use the weird, clunky phrase “You’ve been watching too many TV and sci-fi movies!” in the process.

Family Circus, 10/29/24

Honestly can’t believe Big Daddy Keane is so happy to be on the receiving end of this kind of adoration from Jeffy, who is objectively his worst child by every measure. If he could see the look of withering disgust Billy is dishing out right now, he’d be brought back down to earth right quick.

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High-falutin’ Sunday

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Hi and Lois, 10/20/24

It’s a bold choice to have Hi and Lois make direct eye contact with you, the reader, in the final panel here. This isn’t just a cute domestic scene; it’s a polemical tract, tailored to urge all of us to not be so quick to “tidy” that we purge beloved memories of our past. Frankly, I’m glad I didn’t read this before I spent a lot of time and energy reorganizing my closet a couple weekends ago, as I’d probably still have a bunch of shirts I never wear hanging up in there. “Let’s leave it! It’s a time capsule!” I’d tell my increasingly irritated wife.

Family Circus, 10/20/24

The Family Circus’ bread and butter is what I like to call “darndest thing saying,” which is the Keane Kids trying to explain some aspect of the world or talk like a smart adult but fucking it up very badly, due to idiocy. However, today’s installment makes a fatal misstep, because one of the darndest things they say is actually correct! We really do call autumn “fall” because of falling leaves — in fact, the original phrase was “fall of the leaf.” Does Billy, like me, spend his time entertaining himself exploring word origins on the Online Etymology Dictionary site? If so, he probably enjoyed learning that “autumn” comes to us from Latin but may ultimately have an Etruscan root, and that there is in fact no common Indo-European word for the period between summer and winter, which may imply that the steppe herders of the proto-Indo European urheimat did not perceive it as a distinct season.

Mary Worth, 10/20/24

I think Wilbur has finally hit his logical endpoint as a character: he has become the human embodiment of rock bottom. The prospect of marrying him is so vile and horrifying as to make literally any alternate scenario seem preferable. The middle panel in the bottom row comes from Estelle’s fictional dreamscape, but I assume it will haunt your very real nightmares tonight, as it will mine.

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Mild Saturday enjoyment

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Shoe, 10/19/24

To be sure, the human heart is a mystery, and nobody can say why anyone does anything, really, but that hasn’t stopped me from wondering why exactly Shoe brought back Muffy Hollandaise, a beloved (?) character from the ’80s or maybe the ’90s, couldn’t really tell you for sure but it’s been a long time, trust me. Anyway, since like 60% of Shoe strips are just characters saying generic gags to one another that don’t really pertain to them as distinct individuals, maybe the team decided they needed one more recurring character shape to be one of the gag-sayers, just to mix things up further. And, if that gag-saying character shape was a sexy bird-woman with a big juicy ass (as amply demonstrated in panel two), who’s going to complain? Certainly not all you perverts who read my website, that’s for sure.

Gasoline Alley, 10/19/24

Man, I kind of love how Ida Noe is losing it as she gets eclipsed by this fuckin’ robot. Arty’s all like, “Let’s go to space! I’m going to help you cheat in school,” and Ida Noe, who is literally a doll animated by some kind of evil spirit from the depths of hell, has to say “Uh, uh, let’s not be hasty! Have you talked to your parents? You don’t want them to worry!”

Family Circus, 10/19/24

I really enjoy how Billy is physically restraining Jeffy here. “No, you don’t understand, he’s grilling. It’s … too dangerous.”