The creator of The Family Circus has died at age 89. I don’t (often) enjoy speaking ill of the dead, but the mediocre, sanitized circles of contempt that this man unleashed upon the Earth every day for decades are unforgivable.
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.
HEAR HEAR! Well-written, Paul, and I’ll back you up on that to the HILT!
Wow.
I never liked Family Circus. I still long for the days when Calvin and Hobbes, Far Side, Outland and Doonesbury were all waiting for me.
That being said…
PAUL CONSTANT – WHAT A DICK YOU ARE.
I can’t wait until the mercury writers are dead so I can write the same about them.
No, I finally agree with Paul. I wish we could kill that fuck second time. Good riddance, fucker.
I don’t think Paul was so damn gleeful when Gadaffi or Bin Laden were killed. Nope.
But the creator of Family Circus dies, and boy, watch out.
Man, I’ve seen some stupid shit written by you here before in these pages, but you managed to top yourself.
I’m glad this offensive rubbish is gone and that horrible man will create no more.
+2 for #2 and #5.
absolutely ABHORRED the treacle that Mr. Keane foisted on us but, jesus christ, let it fucking go. He probably has children/grandchildren/great-grandchildren that could stumble on your little rant while trolling the internets. do they deserve this shit?
have a little respect for the dead, man.
Jesus, Paul. It was just a comic, though not a great one. Shit, terror and self-loathing? What was so awful with his work? His conservative agenda? Yes, he was conservative but I don’t seem to remember any Family Circi that were antisemetic, anti-gay, anti-immigration, etc. The closest he ever came to controversy was when the mom got a new haircut.
You sound like a bizarro version of Rush Limbaugh (i.e. a douche). I am surprised to find this hate coming from the Merc.
Paul Constant, ladies and gentlemen!
Edgy stuff. Thanks again Paul.
I’m cynical as all hell, but I think my third reaction to reading Family Circus was to avert my eyes to that section of the paper thereafter.
Who knew there was a such a world of comic-hate where people held onto such hate that they gleefully post about the author’s death?
I wholeheartedly support your loathing of Family Circus.
You what comedian Paul Constant also hates? Airplane Food! Because it’s…you know…lesser quality than other food? Ha! Huh? Huh? Hrm. Wait. Is it 1997 in here?
@frankieb
Doonesbury is still around. Maybe you meant that it’s not waiting for you with all those other dead strips.
(on a tangent, I had to explain to my 24 year old roommate what the Far Side was yesterday, and I just felt old…)
Seems like Bil Keane’s son has been doing the strip for awhile now, and in a slightly nuanced way it seems more tolerable than the saccharine stuff I read as a lad.
Oh, well. The dead guy definitely made his mark on our culture. Rest in peace, dude.
I used to like this strip when I was a kid. Other people still like it, and they’re not all morons [because of it].
And Paul Constant’s opinions aren’t too important… in the scheme of things.
Of the dead, only the truth. Don’t listen to ’em, Paul.
And still -under the authorship of Jeff “Jeffy” Keane, who continues the…tradition- you may still play the Ziggy Circus game, in which you switch the punchlines of the two strips, usually to hilarious effect.
That jackass who drew ‘Ziggy’ is dead too though, so who knows?
Paul’s had a thing about Thel (the Family Circus mommy) since he was 11. Way to overcompensate. Save it for your therapist.
that’s a lot of hatred toward one of the most innocuous comic strips ever. it was pretty much written for elderly religious folk to have a chuckle.
i mean, seriously.
We used to do something sorta like the Ziggy Circus game when I worked at REI… we’d photocopy that day’s FC, substituting the nastiest captions we could think of, in the break room. We had some good ones, but the all time championship caption was penned by a very mild mannered retiree part-timer in the camping department named Joe (scene: Jeffy kneeling in the open front door, Billy standing behind him, Dad standing and yelling behind the two of them): “Damn it, Billy, I told you to fuck your brother in the ass OUTSIDE!” In my mind, parent sanctioned fraternal sodomy will forever be Bil Keane’s legacy…
My favorite juxtaposition was one that resulted in Jeffy lovingly gazing at his grandmother and saying, “I’m into tough love lately. Go lay down on those rocks over there.”
On the other hand, Ziggy was visiting a psychologist -as usual- who for some reason was addressing him as “Gramma.”
u mad?
Paul–
I think you’ve gotten to a moment in your life when you have to stop and ask yourself, “What the fuck is wrong with me that I bear such malice toward the creator of a comic strip?” You’re a sad, little man, Paul. Be grateful you enjoy a lifestyle that allows you to pin your frustrations on a comic panel, and not a very real danger, like sickness or want.