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Archive: Family Circus

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No armadillos were harmed in the making of these jokes (on my part anyway)

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Hi and Lois, 9/17/21

Do teen boys still, in the year 2021, lie around their bedrooms, decorated with Stones and Led Zep posters, and talk about how bands today suck? I mean, they did when I was a teen in the ’90s, which was also decades after those bands had been relevant, so I don’t see why they wouldn’t now, but I admit that I don’t have any personal insight into the subject. I certainly hope little brothers of teen boys still lurk in the hallway outside their rooms, ready to strut in sassily with a perfect cutting sitcom-quality bon mot, because otherwise I will despair over the direction of today’s youth.

Family Circus, 9/17/21

Sure, you would think Big Daddy Keane would take this opportunity to unceremoniously plop his son on the other side of the fence and then power-walk away from his family forever, but I don’t think the desire to do that iss the emotion being conveyed by his facial expression here. It’s more a look of pure panic, as if he’d do anything to stop whatever sort of blubbering, weeping noise Jeffy is making, which should give all of us pause about whatever sort of blubbering, weeping noise Jeffy is capable of making.

Pardon My Planet, 9/17/21

I don’t really talk about Pardon My Planet very much, but on a day where one of its interchangeable characters spins an erotic description of a very fuckable armadillo, could I really ignore it? I mean, I probably could, most days, but the comics fodder is a little thin today. I just wrung a paragraph out of Jeffy crying, for pete’s sake. Anyway, like I said, this guy wants to fuck an armadillo, but what’s really sad is that he’s ashamed of it so he tries to project conventional feminine attributes onto the poor fantasy beast as if that places his desires within the bounds of traditional heteronormativity, when in fact it just makes it all much, much worse.

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Nonsense is more tolerable when the art is good, it turns out

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Six Chix, 9/13/21

I know I often slag on Six Chix for doing strips that are opaque, baffling nonsense, so here’s a change of pace: today’s strip is opaque, baffling nonsense and I love it! Ha ha, she’s like a dog walker … but for wigs! I think what really makes it for me is that the wigs are on fake wig heads (not sure what the correct term for this is and not looking it up), which are in turn on wheels, because that’s the only way this absurd scenario would even vaguely work. Anyway, A+ work, Six Chix, please keep up to good kind of opaque, baffling nonsense, as opposed to the bad kind, which I will definitely let you know about if you slip up and do it again.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/13/21

I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that the sort of person who has a comics blog is also the sort of person who would get thrown into a tizzy by the revelation that Rex Morgan’s sons are going to kindergarten, but I definitely was thrown into said tizzy, because Rex and June’s sons are babies, right? But that said, the Morgans stole June’s dying best friend’s son in late 2017, when he and their non-stolen biological son were about a year old, so that would make them about kindergarten age now, assuming the Morgans age in real time, which they absolutely 100% do not. The last thing we want is this thing turning in For Better Or For Worse or something. And if Sarah was like five or six when the boys came on the scene, that would make her about 10 now, which is trembling on the precipice of very bad things. Do we want Sarah as a tween? Sarah hitting puberty? This strip needs to step back from the brink now, before somebody gets hurt.

Family Circus, 9/13/21

Not sure whose facial expressions I like better here: Ma Keane’s (“Ha ha, we do not have any jelly without peanut butter in it and that’s very gross, ha ha ha!!!”) or Billy and Jeffy’s (“What, does this dipshit think he’s the King of England or something?”).

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Friday is (mostly) for children

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Family Circus, 9/10/21

A lot has changed for me, both in my life and vis-à-vis my relationship to the comics, since I started this blog in 2004, and definitely the one change I would’ve been least likelty to predict is that I would come to have an occasional grudging admiration for the Family Circus. And I didn’t even have to become a parent for it to happen! Yes, the strip is like 75% darnedest-thing-saying and reused art by volume, but every once in a while you get a great image like today’s, when Daddy has very clearly just had the epiphany that he could be doing literally anything else right now.

Curtis, 9/10/21

Curtis is doing a thing this week where our title character confronts rival mobs of pro- and anti-mask parents in front of his school and I have literally no interest in engaging with it, but I do want to say that “Look, everyone, a child wearing his hat backwards wanting to speak!” is definitely the funniest thing I’ve read this week.

Mark Trail, 9/10/21

A lot has changed for Mark Trail over the years, too, but I’m happy to report that there is one constant in the Trailian multiverse and that is that Mark is absolutely ripped.