Even worse: For as long as shitty small-town newspapers manage to eke out their meager operation costs from advertisers, Keane's horrible legacy will continue to stain comics pages around the nation. The Family Circus has survived him. The Family Circus, with its horrible conservative agenda and fawning worship of the inane, will survive us all. And that's all Bil Keane's fault. He may have been a warm and caring human being, but his legacy is made of shit and terror and self-loathing. A man has died, and that's a shame. But I cannot celebrate the disgusting "art" on which he built his fortune. I wish it died with him.