Archive: Family Circus

Post Content

Panel from Slylock Fox, 9/29/19

Ha ha, yes, sure, Slylock abuses his law enforcement powers to force K-Rock to interrupt up their hot playlist of favorites from the ’80s, ’90s, and today to get an emergency message out to this crocodile car thief, but: what possible reason can there be for our fox detective to drive a car with such a insanely dangerous defect? And that’s not the sort of thing that just happens “accidentally” to an engine; no, I think Slylock actually had the mechanic introduce this feature quite deliberately. His clockwork mind can solve any problem posed to him, defeat any foe, and he feels like nothing challenges him anymore. Quite frankly he needs the sense of constant danger, needs to drive SLY 1 for four minutes and fiftysomething seconds, as Max becomes increasingly agitated, before abruptly pulling over to the side of the road and letting the engine cool and reset. It’s the only way he can feel alive.

Funky Winkerbean, 9/29/19

Speaking of people dying in car crashes, I guess someone in Funky Winkerbean … just died in a car crash? I suppose this is supposed to be Bull, as he spent a lot of the last week agitated because he couldn’t find the car keys (which Linda had hidden from him). The New York Times article about this said that we’d be seeing a “a five-panel sequence [that] shows Bull acting on the decision to take his own life,” but this seems a lot more ambiguous, like maybe he just found the car keys and shouldn’t have been driving and got muddled. Ha ha, it sure will be fun for Linda, having no closure and never really knowing was going through her husband’s mind in his final moments, whether he was trying to find peace or was just alone and confused and scared! This is a great, hilarious strip that people love to read!

Crock, 9/29/19

So … only one of the hens wasn’t aware she was living in a polygamous compound? And she learned because her shared husband was killed by incoming mail? A lot going on here, to be honest.

Family Circus, 9/29/19

Fine, Family Circus, you’ve done it. You’ve created a strip I laughed at unironically. I will always remember September 29, 2019, The Day The Keane Kids Soiled A Piano.

Post Content

Dennis the Menace, 9/24/19

Dennis not understanding common English turns of phrase is a key part of the Dennis the Menace mythos, but it seems the current strip creators have forgotten why that is. The point is that Dennis is supposed to use his (feigned?) ignorance as an excuse to reveal that something shitty his parents have said about one of their acquaintances in private, e.g., “You said there’d be an old battle axe coming over but all I see is this late-middle-aged woman with a bad personality.” All today’s garbage joke does is make it clear that Dennis is stupid, and somebody needs to take it over to the Family Circus where it belongs.

Family Circus, 9/24/19

The Family Circus really needs that joke, to be honest, because I have no idea what’s going on here. Who is this random teen, and why is Billy hanging around with him talking about math? And why are he and Ma Keane giving each other a knowing glance? “It’s algebra,” they’re saying to one another, wordlessly. “He doesn’t know the word for it, but we both know he’s talking about algebra.”

Zits, 9/24/19

So it turns out the terrible thing Jeremy learned yesterday was that he has to repeat freshman P.E., and I know I almost never talk about Zits here so it’s weird that I’m talking about it two days in a row, but I think it’s kind of interesting that a strip that used to get in trouble with the syndicate for using the word “sucks” can now do jokes where the punchline is that Jeremy is mad because his dick isn’t getting any bigger as his adolescence progresses.

Hagar the Horrible, 9/24/19

Hagar and Lucky Eddie can’t bear to look at themselves in the mirror, probably because of guilt from all the horrible murders they’ve done.

Post Content

Family Circus, 9/22/19

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think the joke in today’s Family Circus is too subtle for me. Is it that they both look smug in the final panel because they each think they’ve pulled one over on the other — Ma Keane because she’s talked Jeffy down to a goldfish, Jeffy because the goldfish is what he wanted all along, but he “went big” with his requests so that she’d be more willing to get him a goldfish? I don’t think Jeffy’s actually smart enough to pull that off. I think Ma Keane is looking smug because she talked Jeffy down to getting a goldfish, and Jeffy looks smug because he realized he can eat the goldfish.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/22/19

Oh hey, in case you forgot, Buck, who’s having a new baby with Mindy, already has an old baby — what scientist call a “teen” — from his previous marriage (not to the lady who shot him in the head, the one before that). Anyway, here Buck is having a man-to-man talk with his teen son about how great it is that his teen son knows how to poop in a toilet. They seem like they have fun!

Shoe, 9/22/19

I really love how completely depressed this lady looks here, just utterly wrecked by how poorly the evening has gone up till this point. Clearly the date is unsalvageable, so why not open the dinner conversation with “Hey, you ever eat anything that just gave you the shits real bad?”