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Family Circus, 8/7/06

I’d like to think that little Jeffy is finally asserting himself violently, like a Frenchman whose honor has been insulted, while Billy is suddenly whining like a little baby Italian. But longtime readers of this feature know that Jeffy has neither the cojones to take on his brother’s sternum with his forehead nor the leg strength to take the flying leap depicted in the top half of this panel. The only logical conclusion is that he once again is a pawn in someone else’s game: presumably some other Keane who has a gripe with Billy (Mom? Dad? Dolly? Barfy?) has hurled Jeffy at the offending towhead.

Apartment 3-G, 8/7/06

Speaking of red cards, if Tommie doesn’t do something really dramatic tomorrow — I’m thinking suicide, or at least some sort of ritual cutting — then I’m citing her for drama. “Sorry, Professor, I wanted to ask if you’d watch Crossing Jordan with me last night … but now it’s too late! That is, at least until next Tuesday at 10 p.m., on NBC!”

By the way, panel two features a rare example of the King Features coloring monkeys actually making up for a defect in the original drawing. That cool cat Ari somehow lost his mustache between the first and second panels, making him look all too much more like Mary Worth’s Professor Ian “Chinbeard” Cameron. In an attempt to maintain facial hair continuity, the colorists didn’t daub his upper lip with “caucasian peach” in panel two, leaving him looking like he has one of those icky “got milk?” mustaches.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/7/06

Something about Rex’s bolded-italicized phrase in panel one makes me want to repeat it over and over again, Zippy the Pinhead style. It sounds like it could be a rhyming catchphrase from a Jesse Jackson speech. “Your life was an escalating deception … as you tried to create a dishonest perception! Now you need to make a whole-hearted correction!”

In a comment in an earlier post, faithful reader Laura noted that the little blurb at the top right of the first panel (“As Rex begins to walk away, Troy stops him!”) is, in her words, the “GAYEST. OMNISCIENT NARRATION BOX. EVER.”, which made me chuckle. What I’m wondering is how this so-called omniscient narration box failed to figure out that “Troy”‘s name is actually “Adam,” since everyone in the strip, up to and including Abbey the Wonder Dog, has by now been clued it.

The Middletons, 8/7/06

I suppose it’s strictly accurate to say that it gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “rockin’ and rollin’.” Since nobody has actually used the phrase before, any meaning you attribute to it would be “new.”

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Family Circus, 7/12/06

In the latest salvo in the long-running passive-aggressive War of the Family Circus Brothers, Jeffy calls for Billy to be castrated.

Mark Trail, 7/12/06

I know I’m an effete East Coast intellectual who would shriek like a girl and run away when faced with an actual gun, but … does it seem a little bit weird that that Ranger Rick thinks he’s going to be able to kill Arrow-Butt Grizzly when he hasn’t even tried to tranq-dart him yet?

Getting back to topics that effete East Coast intellectuals are suited to comment on: is Mark a damn handsome sumbitch in panel one, or what?

Gil Thorp, 7/12/06

Meanwhile, Ben Franklin has travelled forward to 2006 in a time machine of his own design to see what’s become of the great nation he helped create, only to be defrauded by Marty Moon.

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Funky Winkerbean, 6/25/06

I know that cancer is a tragic and serious illness, and affects the lives of its victims and their loved ones in many ways, large and small … but this, in a nutshell, is why Funky Winkerbean is the single most depressing comic in the newspaper today.

Mary Worth, 6/25/06

This, on the other hand, is pure God-damned comedy gold. Passing over the mention of the always snicker-worthy “Bum Boat,” I have to say up front and right now that if Jeff gives Mary her walking papers this week, it will make up for the last two lame-o storylines, and then some. Bonus points if she spirals downward into a pit of alcoholic despair.

Extra hilarious aspects of today’s strip:

• Mary prattles on about how she has to dress up because Jeff really wants to go to this nice restaurant, but he’s apparently going to show up in a minty green sports jacket. Maybe he figures that now that he’s won the Masters, he’ll be so busy fighting off golf groupies that he won’t have time for Mary’s meddling.
• Mary’s Chaterstone condo is all at a crazy angle in the first panel, like she’s some sinister supervillain in the ’60s Batman TV show. Which, by right, she ought to be.
• Jeff has a framed picture of Mary that he talks to, or at least that he thought-balloons too. I’ll bet that picture’s heard a lot of sullen, drunken abuse over the years, followed by even more drunken pleading for forgiveness.

Family Circus, 6/25/06

OK, one Family Circus featuring horrifying sibling dynamics, a multi-armed Jeffy attempting to fly, and Bette Midler lyrics? Perhaps attributable to a lapse of judgement, or too much booze. But two? That’s a cry for help, is what that is.