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Family Circus, 12/18/05

There’s all sorts of interesting things to say theologically about Sunday’s Family Circus, like about how different manifestations of God fulfill different needs within the human soul, or how monotheistic religions gradually develop an array of more accessible intercessor figures, and blah blah blah. Mostly what I want to point out about this comic is HOLY CRAP GOD’S THRONE IS FRICKIN’ SWEET. Seriously, I want one of those in my house in front of the TV. Though it doesn’t look all that comfortable, seeing as He appears to not be sitting on His Throne so much as standing in His Celestial Witness Box. But still, it’s pimped out. I could do with the mobs of pygmy-sized seraphim singing my praises, too, while I just lean back with my palms extended soaking it all up.

Several people wrote to me claiming that the blinged-out golden G at the top of this piece of omnipotent furniture indicates that God Almighty is a Green Bay Packers fan. Bite your tongue! Green Bay may be one of the oldest teams in the NFL, but God, and presumably His Throne, have existed since before time began, so a certain midwestern football team should just consider itself lucky that it hasn’t heard from the divine legal department regarding trademark infringement. However, the fact that this particular initial adorns the Heavenly Chair confirms what we here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. have known for years, which is that God speaks English.

Note that God’s radiance is very similar to Margo’s. The theological implications of that are frankly way too disturbing for me to dwell on.

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Family Cirucs, 11/19/05

Billy: Adorable towheaded tyke. Lovable, neighborhood-exploring scamp. Big brother. Son. Christian Scientist?

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Beetle Bailey, 10/31/05

Family Circus, 10/31/05

Just in time for Halloween, the comics are full of SCARY SKELETONS! AAAAHHH! AAAHHHH! Actually, I’ve never quite got the handle on why skeletons are supposed to be scary. I mean, I get vampires (blood-drinking, transforming victims into damned undead), zombies (brain-eating, rotting flesh produces foul odor), werewolves (razor-sharp claws, poor self-control), Frankenstein’s monster (product of perversion of the natural order in which man plays at being God, very tall), and such. But skeletons, well … they’re just bones, aren’t they? Sure, if they walked the earth on their own power, it would be … unsettling, but without muscle mass, how much harm could they really do? Mostly they make me visualize an anthropology lecture, which isn’t “scary” so much as “boring.” (I’m leaving aside for the moment here the skeletal grim reaper, who’s scary not because he’s a walking skeleton, but because he has a creepy robe and a boss scythe and can take your soul to the underworld.)

Anyhoo, the Family Circus and Beetle Bailey both seem to realize that the kids today, they’re not afraid of an animated bag of bones like they used to be, so they’ve come up with a harder-hitting twist: visible bones = malnutrition. Little Billy, always on the make, is planning on exploiting concern for his pathetic, wasted state to get more goodies from the bleeding-hearts in his neighborhood. Check out the little smile on Mommy: she knows that she can remind Billy of this moment if he ever goes soft and wants to donate the family’s hard-earned booze money to some little brown children starving in some filthy third-world hellhole.

Beetle Bailey, meanwhile, seems to have forgotten it’s Halloween altogether, but it still manages to convey sheer terror on the part of Sarge. Convinced to head off-base as part of the lamest 48-hour leave in the history of the US military (Museum? Museum? Where are the whores, soldier?), our portly sergeant is brought face to face with the prospect of his own mortality in the form of some of the most poorly-executed dinosaur skeletons I’ve even seen. While the idea of being reduced to a hulking set of bones has clearly shaken Sarge to his very core, at least he’ll now have the strength to resist the relentless, anorexia-inducing body image peer pressure that is the Army’s secret shame.