For years, I’ve been avoiding reading “Family Circus”. However, they just rearranged the comics page in my paper, and I read it by accident.
And today’s panel (01/12/09) is actually kind of funny. It’s something a kid might actually say, that an adult would later repeat as a funny family story. I lucked out.
You’re a masochist that you even read it any more.
The one truly funny Family Circus was the time Scott Adams drew it.
That is actually decent(compared to the normal FC fare…).
I was amazed a few months back when I saw a Garfield that had me rolling. I should have cut it out since I don’t remember what it was now…
Even a blind pig…
One million monkeys with typewriters…
Okay, it was inevitable but I don’t think it will be repeated.
His first funny FC, and he ruins it with a terrible layout. I had to look thrice to understand that the the girl in the bottom panel isn’t just silently pointing with her mouth agape.
-FrL-
Some show on Comedy Central used to feature “Dysfunctional Family Circus”. I remember one that showed the father necking drunkenly on the couch with some woman, and one of the kids observing, “Daddy really likes Aunt Mary”.
Speaking of Garfield, have you guys come across Garfield minus Garfield?
The clear answer is to whether Family Circus is funny is the fact that someone starts a thread on the Dope about it when he thinks it is. 
Garfield minus garfield is an abomination.
Garfield without garfield’s thought bubbles, however, is sublime.
Huge collection here though of varying quality. Post 12 has some of the first good ones.
-FrL-
God, I miss the DFC on Spinnwebe (even though the bastards routinely rejected my submissions, some of which were gold, I tells ya, pure comedy gold!). However, there are plenty of DFC archives out there.
Oh, I don’t know. If you consider that “snowballing” is sexual slang for passing jizz back and forth from mouth to mouth, the strip’s odd layout contributes greatly to its humorousness.
He called the meatballs “meatbulbs!”
Don’t forget the time the caption was accidentally(?) reversed with the one for The Far Side. Gary Larson wrote once of that incident that while the Far Side cartoon only got a little bit weirder, the Family Circus one actually was improved immensely. No web links are available for Far Side cartoons, but a verbal description of the contrast would be as follows:
ONE-PANEL CARTOONS
Family Circus: The smiling son is saying something while gesturing and looking upwards at his mother, who is cooking/preparing something in the kitchen and smiling amusedly down at him.
The Far Side: An ape-man is sitting at a stone table in a cave, across from a Gypsy-like ape-woman wearing a kerchief on her head who is looking into a stone set on the center of the table.
CARTOON CAPTIONS
“If I get as big as Dad, won’t my skin be too tight?”
“I see your little, petrified skull… Labeled and resting on a shelf somewhere.”
I’m partial to the Nameless Dread takeoff of the FC. The actual site has apparently been deactivated, but the concept was sheer genius.
That was a Dennis the Menace cartoon, not Family Circus, that got juxtaposed with The Far Side.
My filter here at work blocks that site. If I may ask, did your link take one to the infamous “Manson Family Circus” strip?
And the fourth seal is broken
No it’s not, because no, it’s not.
The one for Sunday is kind of violent for a Family Circus. Has something happened to Bill Keane?
Actually the Sunday strip would be funny if it was a Far Side Or Addams Family cartoon.
This was Dennis the Meanace, not Family Circus. But the mix up was still hilarious! There was another that mixed up the captions between DtM and The Far Side where Dennis had a sandwich and the caption read, “Not hamsters again!” and the Far Side had snakes that said, “If I hadn’t learned to make peanut butter and jelly we’d have starved by now.”