defend the indefensible: "the family circus"

this is an endorsement?

12/14/2000 at 15:02:27
Some guys get off on women in Manga and anime, some guys pull the porpoise when they see Blondie or Aunt Fritze. I hate to admit it, but when I see Dolly (the little girl in "Family Circus") I pop wood like you wouldn't believe. I think its her ponytail that does it for me, or maybe her sturdy calves. Oh, and the Grandma (the live one, not the dead one) arouses me, too.

Note: this is NOT a DFS caption. This is real, from 1960, apparently.

yes

I cannot stress this enough.

Yeah great, thanks.

http://www.deadline.com/2010/10/fox-walden-media-win-the-family-circus/

Among other projects, the writers worked with Baldecchi on an early draft of the comedy Scared Guys, about a couple of agoraphobic roommates who have to venture out of their building and across the street to prevent a murder.

why do both examples have to do with billy not wearing pants

haha it's jeffy I think but I had the same thought

The Commando Family Circus

this is going to make even the most grizzled family circus hater say, "you know what, the family circus deserves better than this"

or "i never realized how much depth, humanity and tragedy there was in this silly little comic. bravo, hollywood!"

"it sounds weird to say this, but it harms jeffy's dignity to have him say a catchphrase directly into the camera several times during the film"

I remember my first intro to trinitarian thought was reading one of my grandma's Family Circus collection. A Sunday School teacher is explaining to the kids that "God is one." It confirmed all my half-formed suspicions that the Keane family was probably sort of creepy behind the scenes.

(NB: I no longer find people who believe in the trinity to be creepy, don't get your hackles up.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQyCvttUcMM

note that jeffy is clearly insane

Look who Dolly was for Halloween in 2008:

http://wonkette.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/lil-sarah-palin.jpg

Also Jeffy is Dark Knight Batman...worried about both these kids, tbh. Billy7's clearly oblivious to everything, no worries about him.

if this were a film of one of jeffy's labyrinthine walks around the house/backyard/neighbor's pool/playground shot in a bela tarr super-long-tracking style i could maybe get down with this

actually, meh

is that jeffy or pj in the john mccain costume?

the funniest part of that comic strip is the gathering storm clouds that will surely "dampen" the kids' trick or treating fun!

The suns rays look like surprise lines.. like the sun itself is going "holy crap the dark!"

Also Jeffy is Dark Knight Batman...worried about both these kids, tbh. Billy7's clearly oblivious to everything, no worries about him.

― The Ten Things I Hate About Commandments (Abbbottt), Friday, October 8, 2010 9:48 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

BILLY7?!?

WTF

who is BILLY 7 and what is REALLY going on here

better not talk about the illegal clone farm.

I could see Billys and Jeffys being created in a lab like on the Venture Brothers.

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/5057/crasheddad.jpg

The dad still wears a fedora coming home from work. I know it is pretty pointless to note anachronisms on the funny pages. This is why I note it: if he's still wearing a fedora and trenchcoat out and about, maybe he's still carrying "his own bottle" around, too.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/60/1960s-era_Family_Circus_cartoon.png

I realize some of our greatest cartoonists are excluded by these haphazard limits, including one of the greatest of al time, Bill Keane, whose work I've been attached to nearly all of my life. I don't think anyone chooses a comic to become attached to... By the time we notice our attachment, it's already happened. I didn't love The Family Circus because it was funny. I don't think I noticed or cared about that part at all. I loved the very world of it, a world that I could watch through a portal edged in ink everyday when I opened the newspaper. It was a circle I wanted to climb through. For me, a comic strip is a place that seems to be ongoing. If you look through these circles, you'll see a place that brought a lot of comfort to me as a kid. If you look into them without reading a caption you may see a place a kid in a bad situation might want to get to. I wasn't strong enough for "Peanuts". Not then. For kids in trouble, comics are so much more than jokes and gags.

My first pick for best cartoonist of my whole life is him. Bill Keane. - The Editor

― Lynda Barry from her introduction to The Best American Comics 2008

i'd like to see some of this Bill Keane's work

ha! i've never noticed his name was "bil". jeezis. in typing that out, i did notice, on the second "bil," that the monster speaking his name (it appears as in comic form) had accidentally misspelled it. so i helpfully added the missing second L.

the shame...

That Lynda Barry paragraph! Boy, sometimes I want to cook that lady a nice meal and give her a big hug.

i know! she's the best. have never enjoyed the family circus, but love her tribute. illustrations are great, too.

Aaron McGruder, not much of a fan:

“I don’t go to the cartoonist conventions,” McGruder said. “I went once, to the Reuben Awards”—the Oscars of cartooning—“and I didn’t feel very welcome. I felt a palpable sense of resentment. Bil Keane was the m.c., and he opened doing more than one joke that was clearly aimed at me. It was raw—just some fucked-up shit. O.K., and yet, if I get out of my chair right now and beat the shit out of you, then I’m the bad guy? You’re sitting here, clearly dogging me—not by name, but how many black cartoonists are working? He told some joke about diversity in comics. Like ‘There’s a lot of diversity in comics these days. They don’t have to be funny, they just have to be diverse.’ There were a couple of shots at me where I was like, ‘Motherfucker, you don’t know me. We’re not cool.’ ”

Like 'There’s a lot of diversity in comics these days. They don’t have to be funny, they just have to be diverse.' There were a couple of shots at me where I was like, 'Motherfucker, you don’t know me. We’re not cool.'

gross. maybe bil and gallagher should get a thing together.

Keane's just jealous he didn't get a TV show.

Bil is probably the wrong person to call out other cartoonists for being unfunny.

"They don't have to be funny, they just have to remind old people of their grandkids."

"They don't have to be funny, they just have to remind old people of their grandkids cognition."

That's why I liked Family Circus when I was first learning to read...it had short, easy words in a big typeface and simple jokes that a very unworldly child could understand.

NOT ME

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20111109/us-obit-bil-keane/

Aw, man. Say hi to the ghosts of the grandparents, Bil. And to "Not Me."

no idea you were still around, RIP one-panel guy

Does this mean Dysfunctional Family Circus can come back?

From facebook: "I really hope the map from the funeral home to the cemetery is made utilizing a dotted line"

^^^ A+

rofl

i never had any use for this guy. looking forward to the homages tmmrw tho.

From facebook: "I really hope the map from the funeral home to the cemetery is made utilizing a dotted line"

This was the second thing I thought upon hearing the news.

The first, of course, was something about Dan Perry and the DFC.

'Family Circus' creator Bil Keane dies at 89

By AMANDA LEE MYERS, Associated Press – 2 hours ago

PHOENIX (AP) — Bil Keane's "Family Circus" comics entertained readers with a simple but sublime mix of humor and traditional family values for more than a half century. The appeal endured, the author thought, because the American public needed the consistency.

Keane, who started drawing the one-panel cartoon featuring Billy, Jeffy, Dolly, P.J. and their parents in February 1960, died Tuesday at age 89 at his longtime home in Paradise Valley, near Phoenix. His comic strip is featured in nearly 1,500 newspapers across the country.

Jeff Keane, Keane's son who lives in Laguna Hills, Calif., said that his father died of congestive heart failure with one of his other sons by his side after his conditioned worsened during the last month. All of Keane's five children, nine grandchildren and great-granddaughter were able to visit him last week, Jeff Keane said.

"He said, 'I love you' and that's what I said to him, which is a great way to go out," Jeff Keane said of the last conversation he had with his father. "The great thing is Dad loved the family so much, so the fact that we all saw him, I think that gave him great comfort and made his passing easy. Luckily he didn't suffer through a lot of things."

Jeff Keane has been drawing "Family Circus" in the last few years as his father enjoyed retirement.

Keane said in a 1995 interview with The Associated Press that the cartoon had staying power because of its consistency and simplicity.

"It's reassuring, I think, to the American public to see the same family," he said.

Although Keane kept the strip current with references to pop culture movies and songs, the context of his comic was timeless. The ghost-like "Ida Know" and "Not Me" who deferred blame for household accidents were staples of the strip. The family's pets were dogs Barfy and Sam, and the cat, Kittycat.

"We are, in the comics, the last frontier of good, wholesome family humor and entertainment," Keane said. "On radio and television, magazines and the movies, you can't tell what you're going to get. When you look at the comic page, you can usually depend on something acceptable by the entire family."

Jeff Keane shared the sentiment, saying "Family Circus" had flourished through the decades because readers continue to relate to its values of family moments.

"It was a different type of comic, and I think that was my dad's genius — creating something that people could really relate to and wasn't necessarily meant to get a laugh," he said. "It was more of a warm feeling or a lump in the throat."

Keane's friend Charles M. Schulz, the late creator of "Peanuts," once said the most important thing about "Family Circus" is that it is funny.

"I think we share a care for the same type of humor," Schulz told The Associated Press in 1995. "We're both family men with children and look with great fondness at our families."

Keane said the strip hit its stride with a cartoon he did in the mid-1960s.

"It showed Jeffy coming out of the living room late at night in pajamas and Mommy and Daddy watching television and Jeffy says, 'I don't feel so good, I think I need a hug.' And suddenly I got a lot mail from people about this dear little fella needing a hug, and I realized that there was something more than just getting a belly laugh every day."

Even with his traditional motif, Keane appreciated younger cartoonists' efforts. He listed Gary Larson's "The Far Side" among his favorites, and he loved it when Bill Griffith had his offbeat "Zippy the Pinhead" character wake up from a bump on the head thinking he was Keane's Jeffy.

Keane responded by giving Zippy an appearance in "Family Circus."

Born in 1922, Keane taught himself to draw in high school in his native Philadelphia. Around this time, young Bill dropped the second "L'' off his name "just to be different."

He worked as a messenger for the Philadelphia Bulletin before serving three years in the Army, where he drew for "Yank" and "Pacific Stars and Stripes." He met his wife, Thelma ("Thel"), while serving at a desk job in Australia.

He started a one-panel comic in 1953 called "Channel Chuckles" that lampooned the up-and-coming medium of television. (In one, a mom in front of a television, crying baby on her lap, tells her husband: "She slept through two gun fights and a barroom brawl — then the commercial woke her up.")

He moved to Arizona in 1958 and two years later started a comic about a family much like his own. Keane and his wife had a daughter, Gayle, and sons Glen, Jeff, Chris and Neal — one more son than in his cartoon family.

"I never thought about a philosophy for the strip — it developed gradually," Keane told the East Valley Tribune in 1998. "I was portraying the family through my eyes. Everything that's happened in the strip has happened to me.

"That's why I have all this white hair at 39 years old."

Thelma Keane died of Alzheimer's disease in 2008 and was the inspiration for the Mommy character in the comic strip.

When his wife died, Keane called her "the inspiration for all of my success. ...When the cartoon first appeared, she looked so much like Mommy that if she was in the supermarket pushing her cart around, people would come up to her and say, 'Aren't you the mommy in 'Family Circus?'"

She also served as his business and financial manager.

Arizona and Keane had a mutual influence on each other. Keane's work can be found all around — from children's centers to ice cream shops.

Likewise, Arizona could also be found in Keane's work.

A 2004 comic saw the family on a scenic lookout over the Grand Canyon with the children asking "Why are the rocks painted different colors" and "What time does it close?"

Jeff Keane said those memories endure.

"He was just our dad. The great thing about him is he worked at home, we got to see him all the time, and we would all sit down and have dinner together. What you see in the 'Family Circus' is what we were and what we still are, just different generations."
On the Net:

http://www.familycircus.com/

"It showed Jeffy coming out of the living room late at night in pajamas and Mommy and Daddy watching television and Jeffy says

...complete this sentence.

I think one of the dogs being named "Barfy" is kind of funny.

Marmaduke's creator is 87 and has been doing it for over 50 years. What motivates these people?

I think with both strips - they could be run the same strips every 10-12 years and nobody would notice, right? Do they ever use any current references?

aw man, RIP

you inspired some of the funniest things I've ever written on the Internet, Bil Keane, and for that I say thank you

This was the second thing I thought upon hearing the news.

The first, of course, was something about Dan Perry and the DFC.

That was the first thing I thought of as well!

Keane responded by giving Zippy an appearance in "Family Circus."

.jpg please

wow
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2KqL7NPliuk/TboXx8xTOrI/AAAAAAAAFbw/lDREQGzsGuk/s1600/zippy-jeffy.jpg

Cool obit

http://www.tcj.com/a-ringmaster-dies-bil-keane-1922-2011/

But the heartfelt endearing aura that floats over the comedy in The Family Circus is only one facet of Keane’s sense of humor. He was an over-the-top public speaker who was the highlight of many cartoonist gatherings, said Arizona Republic editorial cartoonist Steve Benson. Slender and small of stature, Keane often surprised people with a quick wit that veered into biting sarcasm and rampant irony. ”He was hilarious,” Benson told Scott Craven at the Republic. “He was a great emcee who had an amazing ability to play on words. People were surprised to hear this volcanic stream coming out of a little guy.”

In 1980, Keane was on Larry King’s nation-wide radio show, and after King welcomed him to the show, Keane responded in his gravelly voice: “Larry, it’s more than a thrill to be here. It’s a damn inconvenience.”

Keane also drew cartoons for Yank magazine and the Pacific Stars and Stripes, for which he created a feature called At Ease with the Japanese.

What in the goddamn world, what are THOSE like?

Also:

http://images.tcj.com/2011/11/FamCircus0006.jpg

Haha, i remember seeing that one

Mommy, mommy, Barfy threw up and Emperor Showa is eating all the big pieces!

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/arts/television/gary-david-goldberg-creator-of-family-ties-dies-at-68.html?ref=obituaries&_r=0

R.I.P.

um

lol

"starring Tina Yothers as Dolly"

Not me!

The bane of ILXor ian's existence!

http://www.parkslopefamilycircus.com/

I've held on to this one since 1992. It's hilarious!

https://scontent.fbed1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/33610979_10156902697747137_173889383135444992_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&oh=2c580e027d214765c61ff0caf5fa1065&oe=5B8A60BE

I don't know if this one is about Christmas or just a winter one...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PQQDZzMr9UU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQQDZzMr9UU

https://i.imgur.com/0JvAsfx.jpg