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Family Circus, 7/29-30/05

Jeffy, Jeffy, Jeffy Keane: always the observer in the cavalcade of family dysfunction. Check out the little tyke’s blank, uncomprehending expression in these two panels. In the first, he doesn’t seem to pick up on the significance of the Cathy-style sweatballs flying off of Billy’s head as the elder brother faces maternal wrath for some unidentified and arbitrary slight. Will his literal-minded interpretation of Mom’s cruel threat save Billy from the threatened punishment — or make it that much worse, when the time comes? We’re left to wonder. In the second panel, Billy looks on passively as Dolly uses his presence as an excuse to cruelly remind Grandma of her washed-up, pre-technological, ice-floe-ready status. All this ambient hate and rage doesn’t register on the surface, of course, but you just know the seeds of deep subconscious trauma have been planted. Both these panels have the feel of someone looking back and saying, “Oh, yeah, so that’s why I am the way I am.”

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Family Circus, 6/19/05

On Father’s Day, the Family Circus once again trots out the tired old “Billy takes over for a day” gag; what with Billy’s little brother Jeffy actually writing the strip now, the actual point of this exercize in meta is becoming increasingly difficult to parse. However, this strip does have one thing going for it, in that it features the patriarch of the good Family Circus family being spurned by God himself. Who hasn’t wanted to see Bil Keane get the big thumbs down from the Almighty? One wonders if Yahweh’s rejection of the Keane clan is the result or the cause of Dolly’s flirtation with patriotic Wicca.

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The Phantom, 6/17/05

Ces apparently gets racist hate mail for implying that a ten year old might be capable of taking care of herself; thus, I’m sure that King Features is really hearing it about this strip, which involves a latex-suited freak and a cone-hatted pygmy joking about the jungle-roofie-fueled date-rape (er, archaeological-expedition-rape) sequence that’s coming soon. Yuck.

Ziggy, 6/17/05

As C. Montgomery Burns once so aptly put it: “Oh, Ziggy, will you ever win?” I guess some GPs really are sick of dealing with patients without HEALTH INSURANCE.

Family Circus, 6/17/05

Dolly mangles the Pledge of Alliegence, day four: America’s nightmare continues. Remember how much trouble Roseanne Barr got into for singing the Star Spangled Banner off-key? You’d think that Sean Hannity would have called for the Keane clan’s death by now, but no such luck.