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Archive: Family Circus

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Housewives … cooking steak? This I gotta see

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Blondie, 3/28/25

There is, as is often the case with Blondie, a Lot Going On Here, but let’s not sleep on the TV announcer appearing to react to Dagwood’s dismissal in the second panel. It’s as if they’re all too aware they exist only to be viewed by Dagwood, the center of this comic’s universe and the pivot point of its reality. “Please don’t change the channel! We’ll do a show that caters to your weirdo fetishes! I can’t go back to the void again! I can’t!”

Hagar the Horrible, 3/28/25

Honi’s romance with Lute is much frowned upon by her parents, generally playing on the trope of “Oh god our daughter is in love with an unsuccessful musician”, but today’s strip is I think the first I’ve seen that actually gets into what the lived experience of being in love with an unsuccessful musician is actually like. She goes to gigs with him at shitty clubs! She actually enjoys his music! She doesn’t get that nobody else does! He has to tell her stuff like “Uh, baby, the vibes were off”!

Family Circus, 3/28/25

Really enjoying the two Keane facial expressions here. Jeffy is wounded, obviously, but also kind of frozen and can’t quite articulate what exactly he’s feeling, while Ma Keane is like “Look, man, we all think this stuff, but we try not to say it, OK?”

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Spring has sprung

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Family Circus, 3/27/25

I’m not entirely sure what this is even supposed to mean, but I guess it has to do with the fact that Big Daddy Keane can do math silently in his head. Can you imagine having thoughts that you don’t immediately blurt out loud, to the annoyance of everyone around you? Billy sure can’t!

Gearhead Gertie, 3/27/25

A lot of people complain when I post Gearhead Gertie strips. “How can you keep posting that strip that’s about nothing other than NASCAR?”, they ask me. Well, big news: today’s strip explores the divine cosmology of Gertie’s world. We learn that she exists not in a universe where a single remote and omnipotent deity is the sole creator, but rather one where a more accessible pagan pantheon manages the universe, and you can call them on the phone, to harass them about NASCAR.

Hi and Lois, 3/27/25

I’m enjoying visualizing what clearly happened between these panels: Thirsty announced that he was blowing off work to go to the game, and tried to convince his best friend and fellow baseball fan to join him, but Hi instead demurred and slunk off to the office like the coward he is.

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Billy is what we call a “Texas-sized dumbass”

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Mary Worth, 3/7/25

We have all, obviously, been thinking about Wilbur Weston’s sex life for far too long, but consider the psychic damage these endless “Wilbur, against all odds and logic, gets laid” plots are visiting upon his daughter in particular. Think about how you’d feel if you picked up Wilbur at the airport and he immediately launched into a digression about all the hot, hot vacation sex he had just had. You can see why Dawn is trying to steer the conversation towards some kind of lasting emotional connection Wilbur might form with this “Belle” person, but, nope! Wilbur doesn’t do long distance. We’re dangerously close to hearing him say the phrase “hit it and quit it.”

Family Circus, 3/7/25

Say what you will about the Family Circus, but unlike many comics, it rarely resorts to a “work backwards from a punchline” situation, though sadly that is what I think we’re seeing here. The idea of a clothing store that has a whole section of t-shirts with just state names on them is pretty funny, I have to admit, but ultimately where this panel fails for me is that I do not believe that Billy knows anything about the relative sizes of various states, or really any geography facts at all.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/7/25

“We have a giant, vicious robot, the ArtGuard 3000, that protects the peaceful, disturbance-free experience of our museum with multiple razor-sharp blades. Don’t worry, it will drag you down to the basement first, so our significant collection of regional art will not be splattered with your blood.”