Post Content

Family Circus, 11/1/04

A week ago, I would have scoffed at the idea that any child Jeffy’s age would even know what marbles were. However, Monday I went to a nine-year-old’s birthday party, and you know what the gift that made the biggest impression was? Marbles! I was shocked, and a little horrified. You know, when I was a kid, we had to play crappy video games on an Atari 2600 (and what person born during the 1970s doesn’t remember the bitter, bitter disappointment that was the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man?). And so many people of my generation went on to slave away selflessly in the computer industry, for almost no pay, in order to produce whiz-bang, photorealistic, ultraviolent video games so that their kids didn’t have to suffer like we had suffered. And this is how they’re repaid? It just makes me sick.

This panel illustrates one of my favorite narrative oddities in the Family Circus: dialogue that’s half in word balloons, half in quote marks below the panel, and all half-assed. Also, sometime this week someone on the Family Circus production line decided to kick the caption font up from Roman to boldface. Maybe the whole family’s just been shouting a lot lately.

Post Content

Family Circus, 10/9/04

This has to be the meanest thing I’ve ever seen in the Family Circus. Dad smiles at his own cruel taunt, but little Billy’s face, contorted in a rictus of rage, shows that he’s now at the age where such make-believe games no longer soothe the sting of forced child labor. You can’t spend leaves at the store, Dad, and I’m guessing you’re not coughing up any real money at the end of this chore, either. Decades from now, someone’s going to be describing this moment to a therapist.

Comics sweatshop watch: no doubt the hapless soul who did the coloring for this strip is shackled to a drafting table somewhere in the steamy tropics, and can therefore be forgiven for making those fallen leaves a vibrant, mid-summer green.

Post Content

The Family Circus, 10/2/04

Hey, the dotted lines are back! And in the daily panel, no less! That’s great. It gives you something to latch onto in this panel, in which nothing else seems to have any meaning or purpose. You see, Jeffy goes around the clown because, well, because he doesn’t want a free coupon, I guess. And he’s sweating because … clowns are scary? And he says “Oops!” because … well, I have no idea why he says that. And he’s holding something in his hand, but it’s way too small for me to tell what it is. And when’s the last time you saw a clown in full get-up handing out free coupons? Usually they’re passed out by bored college students/homeless people. Unless there’s a big to-do or something. True story: On the day that Star Wars Episode I premiered, I walked by a theater where it was showing, and among the mob outside was a hapless individual dressed up as a giant cup of yogurt who was passing out free yogurt samples. Poor bastard. My friend and I actually got to go in and see the movie for free because some disgusted nerds who had bought tickets to every show playing that evening refused to see it again after the first time and were just handing them out to people. After we saw it, we understood why. We didn’t take any yogurt samples either. But, back to my point, which is as follows: today’s Family Circus — what the hell? I thank you for your time.