The Comics Curmudgeon

Main Menu

Social Media

Archive: Family Circus

Comments are closed

Frogs! Science! Socrates! All the things kids like

Post Content

Dennis the Menace, 1/22/23

One of the biggest transformations in American life over the last generation is that children — including ones who are surprisingly old, or at least surprisingly old to me, a non-parent — have to be strapped into car seats in order to go anywhere. I remember being kind of smug when hearing that the Kids Today can’t go a long car ride without being entertained by a screen of some sort, but then I realized that unlike me at that age, these kids are essentially immobilized for hours at a time, so what can you expect? Anyway, newspaper comics are created by and/or cater to the aesthetic tastes and nostalgia of Boomers and older Gen Xers, so it makes sense that Dennis, a child who is absolutely small enough be in a car seat, is not in a car seat in this comic, even though Henry’s phone places the scene squarely in the present. At least he’s in the back seat, so he won’t be killed instantly by the airbag triggered when Henry inevitably drives into a tree while futzing with the GPS.

Shoe, 1/22/23

Shoe and the Perfersser make up the entirety of the Treetops Tattler’s editorial staff, so it seems a little weird that they’re both in court to cover this story. But it’s not every day you get to see an old man sentenced to die in prison, I guess.

Family Circus, 1/22/23

Literacy, everyone! It’s what transforms you from the idiot dipshit in the first two panels to the smug little fucker in the final one. Learn to read, why don’t ya!

Comments are closed

There’s no escape, Mary — no escape

Post Content

Family Circus, 1/17/23

I’m really loving the body language in today’s panel. Jeffy clearly didn’t just mouth off at random; rather, he made a deliberate choice to provoke his sister, and was emotionally prepared for the consequences. That’s why, even though his body is bending backwards from the sheer physical force of Dolly’s disapproval, you can tell form his face that he’s remaining calm and collected during the onslaught.

Mary Worth, 1/17/23

One of my favorite Mary Worth running bits is Dr. Jeff proposing to Mary and getting rejected. It’s been quite a while since the last iteration of it, though, and it’s clear that Jeff has been biding his time for the perfect moment, the moment when he gets Mary to admit that wedding ceremonies are great and marriage itself is the end-all be-all of personal happiness. You’re almost there, Jeff! You’ve trapped her in her own words!

Crankshaft, 1/17/23

Ooh, foreshadowing, everybody! That’s the prototype of the robot model that’s going to take over Lillian’s bookstore someday, in the wake of “the Burnings,” an impending apocalyptic event that I assume involves the corpses of bookstore owners burned in great pyres by the robots that replace them.

Comments are closed

Not-so-innocent youth

Post Content

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/5/23

Oh, man, look at the shift on Jughaid’s face between panels here. His relationship with Mary Beth is generally of the stereotypical “girl has crush on boy but boy is a just a bit too young to have crushes” you see in newspaper comics, so it can’t be her affections that he’s considering. No, he’s truly absorbed the lawless culture of his family at a young age and is positively gleeful to learn that even the other rustics of Hootin’ Holler consider him and his kinfolk animalistic savages, like the vicious … cow? This metaphor needs work, admittedly, but when you’re a bunch’a wild animals like the Smifs, you don’t care much for “metaphors.”

Gil Thorp, 1/5/23

The Milford player getting bumped out of the way in panel one (and doing the STEAL!ing in panel two) is in fact a high school junior, which is I guess the source of the insult the Forest View player lobs at him in panel one. Do teenagers consider straightforward descriptions of what grade they’re in to be insulting? I wouldn’t know, I don’t talk to teenagers and I don’t care to. Honestly it would be funny if “junior” is meant to be insulting just because the Milford player is a teenager generally, since the Forest View player is, by all appearances, in his mid to late 40s.

Family Circus, 1/5/23

Nooo, Billy, that’s the evil tome with the spell that Summoned you and your siblings! The lock was put on because four of you is all our reality can handle, do not unlock it under any circumstances