I suppose you could say Family Circus was a little bland and somewhat twee, but he was a pretty good artist, and I was a huge mark for his stuff when I was a kid.
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I suppose you could say Family Circus was a little bland and somewhat twee, but he was a pretty good artist, and I was a huge mark for his stuff when I was a kid.
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I guess the best ting I can say about FAMILY CIRCUS is, while it was never a favorite of mine, back in the days when we used to get newspapers regularly, I always used to READ it.
The most memorable running theme in the Sunday cartoons I recall would be when one of the kids would be running around the house, and you'd get a diagram of his path, so you could follow, all in a single image, all of his "adventures" on his way from point A to point B.
Aww, doggone it. I would just read those books again and again when I was a kid. As an adult, while I thought it was a little simple, I was always glad it was there. It added a touch of innocence to the comics page.
...:-( .
His wife died a couple of years back .
I remember reading , she was Australian and he met her while stationed Down Under during World War II and , not only was the young Mrs. Keane a near look-alike of her ( Taking into account that it was a cartoon !!!!! :-) ) , but that Mrs. Circus was stated , at least once , to be an Aussie and a trip made to Oz by the Circuss in a sequence of the strip .
Godspeed , Mr. and Mrs. Keane .
Henry R. Kujawa said:
That little kid is modeled on his son Billy, who pretty much has been doing the strip for the past several years.
The Family Circus is kind of in the same class as Nancy -- an easy target for hipsters to mock because its brand of humor is gentle and sweet. But I liked those Sunday panels, too -- at least, I did back when newspapers ran them large enough so you could see the trail Billy left from point A to point B, which always took him through points C though Z before he got to point B, rendered in a clear, simple line.
I loved it as a kid...especially the bit of joking trivia that he drew the comics as a circle because he played so much tennis that he just liked the tennis-ball shape.
"back when newspapers ran them large enough so you could see the trail Billy left from point A to point B, which always took him through points C though Z before he got to point B, rendered in a clear, simple line."
Newspapers have been self-destructing since at least 1980. Advertising departments wanted more room for ads, less room for cmics. What they didn't seem to comprehend was, COMICS used to make people BUY the newspapers! NOBODY buys newspapers to read ads!!!
This was especially true for continuity / adventure strips (MANDRAKE, THE PHANTOM, DICK TRACY, RICK O'SHAY) where you had to read them every day to follow the stories. The "funny" strips were an added bonus. Or maybe that's vice-versa, if you were already getting the paper everyday anyway. But I always remember when I wrote a letter to THE PHILADELPHIA BULLETIN, and their features editor wrote me back. His reply listed 3 reasons why they'd dropped BUCK ROGERS. None of them made sense. Less than a year later, the paper went belly-up. I saw it coming.
I'm reminded of some of the "funny" strips I used to read... TUMBLEWEEDS, HAGAR THE HORRIBLE, THE WIZARD OF ID, PEANUTS, ANDY CAPP, ERNIE (a comparitive late-comer, and a deeply twisted, sick, perverse on at that!!).
For me, in the 60's, the newspapers WERE comics. Those things you bought at drugstores, they were just a rare novelty item...
My favorite Family Circus was a Sunday installment where the kids were bragging that they were probably the only ones who knew about a certain spot on the beach, but in the background you could see images of all the people who had been there before them.
Simple truths presented in a simple way, yet as timeless as the Mona Lisa or any other great work throughout the centuries.
Family Circus runs in my newspaper, and it's a perpetual reader favorite whenever we run a comics poll. While It is far too saccharin sweet for my tastes, you have to be impressed with its longevity and popularity among the regular joes.
Family Circus seems like a strip that no one would list as a favorite but seemingly everyone knows of it and has read it. Keane found his niche and did very well with it. Little kids and older people seem to be those that appreciated his work the most.
ClarkKent_DC said:
I have to correct myself; Keane's son Jeff is the one who inks and colors the strip.-
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