The Family Circus

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An early strip featuring (L to R) Daddy (Bill), Dolly, Billy, Mommy (Thel), and Jeffy. A fourth child, PJ, was introduced in 1962

The Family Circus (originally, The Family Circle) is a syndicated comic strip created and written by cartoonist Bil Keane and inked/colored by his son, Jeff Keane. The strip generally uses a single captioned panel with a round border, hence the original name of the series, which was changed following objections from Family Circle, the magazine of the same name. The series has been in continuous production since 1960, and according to publisher King Features Syndicate, it is the most widely syndicated cartoon series in the world. Compilations of Family Circus comic strips have sold over thirteen million copies worldwide.

[edit] Characters

[edit] Family

The central characters of the Family Circus are a family whose surname is rarely mentioned. The parents, Bill and Thelma (Thel), are modeled after the author and his wife, Thelma Carne Keane. Their four children, Billy, Dolly, Jeffy, and PJ, are fictionalized composites of the Keanes' five children. With the exception of PJ, the characters have never aged appreciably during the run of the strip.

Bill (In the early years of the strip, named Steve) works in an office, and he is believed to be a cartoonist,; most likely based on the writer of the strip. Bill is also a veteran of World War II.

Thel is a college-educated homemaker. The Los Angeles Times ran a feature article on the Thelma character when Keane updated her hairstyle in 1996.

The oldest child is seven-year-old Billy. A recurring theme involves Billy as a substitute cartoonist, generally filling in for the Sunday strip. The strips purportedly drawn by Billy are crudely drawn and reflect his understanding of the world and sense of humor. Keane modeled Billy after his oldest son, Glen, now a prominent Disney animator.

Five-year-old Dolly is the only girl in the family. Dolly is modeled after Keane's daughter and oldest child, Gayle. "Dolly" was Gayle's pet name as a child.

Three-year-old Jeffy is named for Keane's son (and now assistant) Jeff Keane.

Youngest child PJ was introduced to the strip on August 1, 1962 and is the only character to have aged appreciably over the course of the strip. PJ was introduced as an infant and gradually grew to be about eighteen months old. PJ rarely speaks.

[edit] Extended family

Bill's mother (Florence, but usually called Grandma) appears regularly in the strip and apparently lives near the family. Bill's father (Al, however only used in scenes from heaven, called Grandpa by the kids and Bill,) is dead but occasionally appears in the strip as a spirit. His father (as a spirit) plays a prominent role in the TV special Family Circus Christmas.

Thel's parents are both living but apparently live several hundred miles away in a rural area. The family occasionally visits their farm for vacation.

[edit] Pets

The family pets are two dogs—a Labrador named Barfy and a cocker spaniel named Sam—and a cat, an orange tabby named Kittycat.

[edit] Gremlins

In April of 1975, Keane introduced an invisible gremlin named "Not Me", who watches while the children try to shift blame for a misdeed with a "not me". Additional gremlins named "Ida Know", (September 1975) "Nobody", "O Yeah!" and "Just B Cause" were introduced in later years.

[edit] Location

The Family Circus takes place in Scottsdale, AZ. They often visit a popular ice cream parlor named the Sugar Bowl, and Jeffy once went to St. Joseph's Hospital for a tonsillectomy. Thel was seen playing tennis with a racket marked "Scottsdale Racket." However, the family has had snow in the strip. Bil Keane commented that he took scenes from his boyhood in Pennsylvania, such as snow, and added them to the strip. The family moved early in the strip, from an unknown area (perhaps Pennsylvania) to Scottsdale.

[edit] Other characters

• Morrie is a playmate of Billy's and the only recurring African-American character in the strip.
• Mr. Horton is Bill's boss.

[edit] Format

[edit] Daily strip

The daily strip consists of a single captioned panel with a round border. The panel is occasionally split in two halves. One unusual practice in the series is the occasional use of both speech balloons within the picture and captions outside the circle. The daily strip does not generally follow a weekly arc, with the exception of family vacations.

[edit] Sunday strip

The format of the Sunday strip varies considerably from week to week, though there are several well-known recurring concepts and themes. Among the most popular are the "dotted line" comics, showing the characters' paths through the neighborhood or house followed by a thick dotted line. (The earliest showing of the dotted line was on April 8th, 1962, though on February 25 of that same year, the first strip that had a path appeared.) This concept has been parodied by other comic strips, including Pearls Before Swine, For Better or For Worse, Mother Goose and Grimm, and Marvin.

Other recurring concepts include a single picture surrounded by multiple speech balloons, representing the childrens' response to the given scenario, although the speaker of any given speech balloon is never explicitly shown (This format began on May 30, 1965).

[edit] Religious themes

One distinguishing characteristic of the Family Circus is the frequent use of Christian imagery and themes, ranging from generic references to God to Jeffy daydreaming about Jesus at the grocery store. Keane states that the religious content reflects his own upbringing and family traditions. Keane is Roman Catholic, and in past cartoons the children have been shown attending Catholic schools with nuns as teachers and attending Catholic church services. [1]

[edit] In other comics

Billy guest-starred in the 75th anniversary party of Blondie and Dagwood in the comic strip Blondie.

[edit] Television

The Family Circus has inspired three television specials: A Special Valentine with the Family Circus (1978), A Family Circus Christmas (1979), and A Family Circus Easter (1982).

[edit] Parody

For a list of sites containing Family Circus parodies, see Dysfunctional Family Circus#External links

The Family Circus has been widely parodied or satirized in film, television, internet media, and other daily comic strips. In an interview with the Washington Post, Keane insists that he is flattered and believes that such parody "...is a compliment to the popularity of the feature..."[2] The official Family Circus website contains an archive of syndicated comic strips from other authors which parody his characters.

Of particular note is the now-defunct Dysfunctional Family Circus website, which paired Keane's illustrations with user-submitted captions. While Keane claims to have found the site funny at first, reader feedback coupled with a trend towards double entendre and vulgarity inconsistent with Keane's Catholic values prompted him to request the site be discontinued.

On Amazon.com and related sites some of the highest rated reviews for Family Circus merchandise are parody reviews.[3]. Though Amazon regularly purges many of these reviews for vulgar content, the Family Circus books on Amazon maintain a higher rate of false reviews than most of its catalog. A recurring sentiment is that author Bil Keane is evil or megalomaniacal.

[edit] References in popular culture

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. (June 2007) The article could be improved by integrating relevant items into other sections and removing inappropriate items.

• Mr. Show with Bob and David episode "Who Let You In?" introduces Imminent Death Syndrome, a disease in which the sufferer is constantly on the brink of death and as such is told by others that they are talented in an effort to make them feel good during their final moments. "The guy who draws the Family Circus" is listed as a sufferer of the disease among many other celebrities who presumably owe their entire careers to IDS in spite of their lack of talent. On his comedy album "It's Not Funny" David Cross also cites a "Family Circus" strip in which PJ mispronounces "spaghetti" and "meatballs" as "pasghetti" and "meatbulbs" during a bit about electric scissors in which someone must miss an Evanescence concert because cutting out the "Family Circus" strip with regular scissors takes too long.
• In the 1999 film Go Todd Gaines (Timothy Olyphant) tells Clair Montgomery (Katie Holmes) that he hates the Family Circus as he reads a newspaper. He says it's just sitting there in the bottom left corner of the page, "waiting to suck".
• In the episode of The Simpsons, "Homer Simpson, This is Your Wife", Homer collects all 40 years of the comic strip The Family Circus, and then (with an indifferent "eh") throws it in the fire.
• In the Chris Elliott series, Get a Life (TV series), Elliott refers to the Family Circus as being "fall down funny".
• In episode 424 of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Joel invents a device called the Cartuner that takes two newspaper strips and synthesizes them into one. When he combines The Family Circus with The Far Side it produces a comic with Billy being chased by jackals, accompanied by the familiar dotted line.
• The Pinky and the Brain episode "The Pink Candidate" centers around Pinky writing to a newspaper editor over his concern about The Family Circus' lack of humor and becoming elected president after a long string of misunderstandings and manipulation by Brain, only to be removed from office after Bil Keane finds evidence of Brain's world-domination plans.
• The online comic The Perry Bible Fellowship featured a Family Circus parody in a strip entitled Way Too Much.
• Comic strip Pearls Before Swine has a story arc which had the Family Circus characters sheltering Osama bin Laden. In an August 13, 2006 strip, Pearls Before Swine involved Pig and Rat musing on comic strip characters who never age. The last panel shows Dolly and Jeffy as adults, with Jeffy being drunk and wanting a martini badly. In 2007 "Pearls Before Swine" character "Rat" is almost beaten up by "Family Circus" fans for nasty parodies of "Family Circus". Rat is let go only after allowing "Family Circus" characthers to crossover to "Pearls before Swine".
• In the October 8, 2000 strip of Kevin and Kell, a dotted line is traced around the Dewclaws' yard, and names of various species are posted along the route. At the end, it is revealed that Coney, a carnivorous infant rabbit, traveled that route and ate all eight species there, and apparently, the "Not Me" gremlin.
• MAD Magazine ran a week's worth of strips in a feature entitled "The Dysfunctional Family Circus," hinting at adultery, various forms of abuse, alcoholism and other problems within the family. The Family Circus is often parodied in other contexts, such as versions of it involving The Sopranos and George W. Bush's family.
• In 8-Bit Theater Fighter sometimes laughs at random times while thinking of the Family Circus.
• On Late Night with David Letterman during the 1980s, a recurring segment involved the show's senior writer, Gerard Mulligan, coming onstage with an album of Family Circus cartoons that he clipped and saved. He and Letterman would then read a few selections and engage in banal chit-chat, usually explaining the joke of each clipping despite it being fairly obvious. The skits would usually end with a non sequitur punchline, such as a girder falling from the ceiling and knocking Mulligan unconscious.
• In the Drawn Together episode "Xandir and Tim, Sitting in a Tree," Billy is shown having murdered his entire family, a Family Circus-style dotted line tracing the path of his rampage. When Spanky Ham, a hostage negotiator, tells Billy that "Mommy says God will decide who should pay for the sins of the world," Billy replies, "Mommy will live inside me forever!" He then eats Thel's heart just before shooting himself in the head. As Spanky goes home, a newspaper is shown saying "'Not Me' Blamed", even though he was shown burned alive among Billy's other victims.
• One of the final story arcs of the Bloom County comic strips (Berke Breathed) included a going-away party, in which Opus learned from each of the other characters where he or she would be going. They included Portnoy and Hodge Podge working as janitors backstage at Marmaduke; Steve Dallas joining the cast of Cathy; and Milo Bloom with a snake swallowing him head first and appearing Tuesdays in The Far Side. Also moving on was the young African-American character Oliver Wendell Jones, who was re-drawn to imitate Bill Keane's artistic style of illustration (i.e., squashed ovoid head, round eyes, short stature), and who told Opus that he'd joined "The Family Circus" and would be bused in.
• In the Family Guy episode "E. Peterbus Unum," When Stewie Griffin uses newspapers as diapers, he gladly defiles The Family Circus, referencing Not Me.
• In his webcomic "Nothing Nice to Say," Mitch Clem references The Family Circus in two separate strips (I Hate Bill Keane and I Hate Bill Keane II).

[edit] External links

• The Family Circus Official Homepage
• The Family Circus at King Features
• Toonopedia
• Amazon reviews on Family Circus books… - a blog post analyzing reviews from Amazon.com that have since been removed from the site.
• - Washington Post interview with Bil Keane (2002)