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Archive: Family Circus

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Sweet gamer chair, Alexander

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Gasoline Alley, 3/7/24

Man, here’s a story of our modern world for ya: You head down to City Hall, because they’re trying to rename your town, because of woke, and you wanna give those politicians what-for, but then you end up running into some dumb rustic who’s banging the mayor and he wastes your time with a bunch of “Why do we drive on a parkway but park in the driveway” bullshit. Eventually you get annoyed and give up and go home. This is why ordinary people don’t want to get involved in our civic institutions anymore!

Family Circus, 3/7/24

Obviously the joke here is that this is a bug and Jeffy is too stupid to realize it, but I do like that they just drew it as a featureless black dot. It’s like we’re seeing through his eyes! Maybe his universe really is unravelling around him! What a glorious day that would be, for all of us.

Blondie, 3/7/24

Today’s Blondie features two teenagers hanging out and playing video games, an extremely normal scenario that I am absolutely flabbergasted actually appeared in a legacy newspaper comic strip. I think I may actually have to go lay down somewhere.

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The old, the young, the beautiful

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Family Circus, 2/24/24

The Family Circus was originally drawn by Bil Keane, with the characters all being thinly veiled versions of him and his real family, and the Bil analogue character in the strip also worked as a cartoonist; the narrative layers only got more tangled when real-life Jeffy took over, making the occasional guest stints by “Billy, age 7” a true semiotic swamp: originally these panels were Bil pretending to be his son pretending to be him, and now they’re Jeff pretending to be his brother pretending to be their father. Anyway, here’s today panel, which features said father vividly writhing on the floor in agony!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/24/24

I guess it’s probably good that soap opera comics, a form of entertainment primarily enjoyed by the elderly and infirm, are increasingly targeting those readers with PSA-style messages about how they need to have a plan for the inevitable upcoming incident when they will have fallen and won’t be able get up, but in their shoes I personally would find it a little insulting. Dagnabbit, these older folks get plenty of bad news in the rest of the paper! When they turn to Rex Morgan, M.D., they want to see our heroes get a fat check or prance around in their underwear for a bit. They very much do not want to stare into the wizened face of their own mortality, in the form of Aunt Tildy and the “Count” here.

Mary Worth, 2/24/24

God I love this strip. Recent events have sent Keith into turmoil, but Mary? Mary is doing great. Thriving, even. Walking alone around the Charterstone grounds, serenely meditating on some of her favorite zero-content aphorisms. Truly living her best life.

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Friday fast takes

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Gasoline Alley, 2/23/24

In 1918, when this strip began, most American cities, even small ones, had electric streetcar networks. These were only beginning to be displaced by the increasingly popular personal automobile, which hobbyists tinkered with in areas dubbed things like “Gasoline Alley.” I think it would be a fitting end to the strip if they put a light rail line down the middle of the town and it magically allowed Walt to finally, blessedly die, or maybe just non-magically ran him over.

Gil Thorp, 2/23/24

Say, how’s Gil’s divorce going? It’s going “the kids are eating as fast as humanly possible so they can leave when their mom picks them up,” you say? Interesting, interesting.

Family Circus, 2/23/24

Billy, I just want to say that it’s very sad that you consider school to be your “personal life.” You aren’t even very good at it!