Where’s Markxxx when you need him?
Oh, I am so sorry to hear that. I grew up with those cartoons, and I’m old! Unlike Peanuts cartoons as the years went on, I still enjoyed them.
While I’m sorry for the Keane family, I admit that I’m also looking forward to the day when this strip stops running (finally).
It was diabetes, right? I mean, it had to be.*
The Nietzsche Family Circus is still one of my favorite sites.
- Because Family Circus was so treacly sweet. I swear no one gets me.
I bet his funeral procession will follow a dotted line with arrows, thru the backyard, in and out of the doghouse, up the tree, down again, thru the back door of the kitchen…
So the rest of the strips will now be drawn by Billy (age 5)?
He was apparently a nice man but the fact he’s dead doesn’t improve his comics.
Fear not, however: The Family Circus will continue for as long as there will be newspapers to run the strips, which will likely stop being the case before his son dies.
Awww… 
I really loved that strip.
“Bill Keane dead, “Not Me” wanted for questioning, film at 11…”
RIP, Bil Keane.
The strip was fantastic and wonderful for adults to share with kids in the right age group. Warm fuzzies all around for those memories.
Before I was part of that demographic, and after I was no longer a part of it, the strip mostly sucked. But that’s okay, I don’t mind not being the target audience for everything out there.
Stephen Pastis (Pearls Before Swine) whose strip can be merciless towards the Circus, wrote a very touching piece on his blog.
Yeah I came in to say the same thing about markxxx. Well, maybe he still posts here, or just lurks, under a different ip or name. I liked his posts.
As for family circus, sometimes it was so saccharin sweet it made me ill, but “not me” the ghost was ok I guess. I also liked when the editors of some newspaper accidentally switched the captions of family circus and the far side. It’s in the prehistory of the far side anthology.
How did the guy keep coming up with new inspiration for material about young kids? Did he work around them, have a large and ever expanding family with lots of nephews and grandkids, or just rely on imagination? I wonder
The only one I ever laughed at was the one where Dolly said her mom was putting on her “oil of old lady”.
Gotta give it credit for its staying power, however.
Actually, it’s Jeffy (53).
That’s more a function of the medium and, more to the point, everyone who threatens to drop newspaper subscriptions if their favorite comic is not carried.
I loved the Dysfunctional Family Circus and was heartbroken to see it close, but was impressed that Keane managed to convince Greg Galcik to end it with a phone conversation. Greg was a notoriously hard man to make laugh (I managed to once), and in his explanation of why he decided to end the strip, said that Keane made him laugh out loud during the conversation. It came down to the fact that The Family Circus, no matter how cheesy, was the man’s life’s work.
So, even though I appreciated your work merely as rich subject for parody, thank you Bil Keane.
One of my favorite Bloom County strips was near the end and Oliver was bussed into Family Circus by court order.
Here’s something I’ve never understood: it’s EXTREMELY easy to avoid reading a comic strip you don’t like. I mean, a comic strip is always in the same place on the same page in the newspaper every day. Hence, if you don’t like a strip, know exactly where it will be, and you NEVER have to look at it, let alone read it.
So, why did it seem to outrage and offend so many people?
Oddly enough, the people who loathed “Family Circus” most were PRECISELY the kind of people who are quick to sneer at family values advocates, “If you don’t like this TV show, just change the channel.”
it never seemed to occur to those very people that, if they didn’t like “Family Circus,” they could just ignore it, and let the millions of grandmas and grandpas who WERE fans enjoy little Billy and Jeffy’s antics.