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Family Circus, 1/20/05

Normally, I try to avoid directly discussing the writers and artists of comics in this blog, on the logic that they’re real people whose feelings would be hurt after being on the receiving end of cruel mockery from yours truly. Today, however, I’m making an exception on the part of Bil and Jeff Keane, since I figure that they have the love of millions of children and parents around the world, along with their enormous piles of money, to emotionally sustain them. Anyway, it’s fairly well known that the Family Circus family is not-so-loosely based on the family of artist Bil Keane. Now that Bil’s son Jeff, who apparently has enough clout to not be known professionally as “Jeffy,” has taken over most of the creative duties, I’ve been keenly interested in how young Jeffy is treated in the strip. And, as near as I can tell, he is almost always treated badly. If Jeffy is ever featured in the daily panel, he’s almost always being yelled at (as he is here), being shot at, saying something stupid, or otherwise being crapped on. He’s not the oldest, he’s not the baby, he’s not the girl: he’s just Jeffy, and he has a lot of anger to work out. One wonders if he goes out of the way to make the art as crude and talentless as possible (and the jokes as stupid as possible) when “Billy” takes over in a pathetic attempt to get back at his parent-favored older brother.

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Well, no doubt like many of you, I got swept up in holiday madness last week, and am still playing catch-up in the non-gorging-on-turkey aspects of my life. What with the two Thanksgiving dinners, the Christmas gift exchange with the cousins, the rousing chorus of folk songs from the labor movement, the avant-garde play performed by elementary school children, and the specter of 24 straight hours of uncontrollable vomiting hanging over it all (what, your week wasn’t like that?) I haven’t had time to read the comics so you don’t have to. In both the spirit of the holiday and a desperate attempt to play catch-up, I offer you a week’s worth of comics and corresponding sentence-long things that I’m thankful for.

B.C., 11/23/04

I’m thankful that B.C., having already pissed off both Muslims and Jews, is now going after the Irish, ensuring its departure from the comics pages any day now.

Dilbert, 11/24/04

I’m thankful that public discourse has coarsened to the extent that the phrase “cow’s butt” can now be printed in the comics pages, because I think cow butts are funny.

Beetle Bailey, 11/25/04

I’m thankful that Beetle Bailey has discovered postmodernism, at long last.

Mary Worth, 11/26/04

I’m thankful for Boston, because they rock, man.

Family Circus, 11/27/04

I’m thankful that at least one member of this family is beginning to question the oppressive patriarchal suburban hell in which she lives.

Doodles by Mac and Sack, 11/28/04

I’m thankful that Mac and/or Sack were polite enough to add “please” to their request that I add horns and a bell to the grazing bovine in the bottom middle panel, though I admit that I could have done without the freakish hula-hooping cow above it.

Kudzu, 11/29/04

I’m thankful to Bill O’Reilly, who’s provided days and days of jokes to desperate comic strips everywhere.

B.C., 11/30/04

And now the handicapped. Yep, any day now…

Oh yeah, and one last thing I’m thankful for is this Jonathan Franzen essay about Peanuts from the New Yorker. It’s, like, good and stuff.

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Family Circus, 11/18/04

Seriously, though, I’m starting to worry about what’s going on in the Family Circus. My current theory: in a deliberate attempt to sabotage decades of wholesome goodwill, the artists will have it make progressively less and less sense, just to see how long it will take for people to start complaining. In six months, Billy will be wearing a dress and crawling around on his hands and knees shouting “I’M A TREE! I’M A TREE!”, while PJ just looks on and laughs and laughs.