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Family Circus, 7/7/08

The Family Circus has a long list of crimes that it will eventually have to answer for, but I’m hard-pressed to remember any of its offerings being as visually unappealing as today’s. Faithful reader Dean Booth has already taken things to their logical and repulsive conclusion (warning: very very very gross), so I’ll just point out that in the middle of this filth-eating mess, Jeffy appears to be concerned about his girlish figure. I was going to chalk this up to unrealistic body image propaganda coming from the media, but then I got a look at his disproportionately large ass. Dolly is kneeling, but Jeffy appears to be able to just about put his feet and his butt on the ground simultaneously. It almost looks like he’s wearing the bottom half of a fat suit, or, perhaps more realistically, like he was assembled from various mismatched parts.

(I wrote that last sentence intending to mean that this particular drawing of Jeffy might have been assembled from bits of other drawings, obviously, but I do admit that the idea of the middle Keane boy actually being an unnaturally reanimated collection of corpse parts robbed from the local morgue is deeply pleasing to me.)

Zits, 7/7/08

I like the way Connie appears to be leaning as far away from Jeremy as she can get and still stay in the frame in panel three. It’s like she’s suddenly been forced to visualize her teenage son getting “hands-on learning” from Mrs. Graworski, his biology teacher, and her skull is involuntarily attempting to flee from the source of the offending image.

Pluggers, 7/7/08

Pluggers so enjoy rubbing their carnivorous habits in the face of tree-hugging hippies that they’re willing to pretend to believe in evolution to make their point.

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Family Circus, 7/4/08

232 years ago today, the leaders of the British colonies on the east coast of the American continent took a fateful step, authorizing a Declaration of Independence that would make their fractious home states into a new nation. If the corpses of the men who had been present that day in Philadelphia were revived through some sort of voodoo magic, what would they think of the country they had made? If “pleasure” was an emotion that could penetrate into their monstrous undead souls, they would probably be pleased that their descendants were spending the day goofing off from work, eating huge quantities of meat, and firing off weapons-grade munitions (or, in some places, actual weapons).

But if their mouldering, skeletal fingers were to turn to the funny pages, their empty eye sockets would come to rest on today’s Family Circus, and then their rotting, unbeating hearts would be filled with the one feeling we all know to be possible for zombies: rage. Because the flag is there, and the notes are there, but shouldn’t Dolly be adorably mangling our national anthem (“And the rock heads will blare/ The mom’s purse strings are there”) or some other patriotic ditty (“For space and skies/ For Pam’s full plate of grain”), and not some pestilent tune about picking up male prostitutes on the Jersey seashore or whatever the hell it is she’s singing? What I’m trying to say is, if you see a shuffling mob of undead patriots in moldy powdered wigs attempting to eat the brains of the degenerates who currently live in the country they started, don’t come crying to me.

Apartment 3-G, 7/4/08

I suppose Gabriella is fainting because, as an ethnic, she’s tuned into the spirit world and can thus detect the ghostly/demonic presence that lingers over Lu Ann’s paintings. But I’m hoping that she stumbled on to Alan’s stash.

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For Better or For Worse, 6/27/2008

OK, after a full week of this, we get it: Michael’s a brat and Elly’s overwhelmed. But how on earth do those other comic moms do it? Let’s go see!

Curtis, 6/27/2008

Oh, you do not mess with Diane Wilkins — Curtis knows it, Greg knows it, and I’m willing to bet God knows it. I give author Ray Billingsley a lot of richly-deserved grief, but his characters act like people. Who doesn’t know — and secretly fear — a force of nature like Diane?

Funky Winkerbean, 6/27/2008

Linda Lopez-Bushka is quieter, but no less effective. Jinx has been thwarting Bull’s incompetent attempts to bond, so Mom shows them both how it’s done. And engineers a pleasant summer in a quiet house with the soaps on and her feet up.

Crankshaft, 6/27/2008

With this strip, Crankshaft finally reaches the lower limit of what can reasonably be called “wordplay.” Jeff Murdoch there is Ed Crankshaft’s son-in-law, an ineffective, self-pitying drudge who hates his vicious harridan of a mother, yet is moving her into his home, possibly because it’s the only way he can cause her pain. It’s true: Ed Crankshaft is the comic relief in this strip.

Gah, I can’t close the week on that note! Let’s see some bonus panels!

Family Circus, 6/27/2008

Yes, Billy, and “LAME” is an adjective. But look how the tyke’s melon head has grown, and the mouth with it! A few months more and its blackness will consume the entire frame, matching the artwork to the captions at last.

Judge Parker, 6/27/2008

Judge P. comes back after eighteen months and promptly leaves on vacation. Who does this guy think he is — Josh?

— Uncle Lumpy