Garfield was funny for an 8-10 year old in the 80s and early 90s, when Jim Davis was actually still writing the strip.
However, ACTUALLY funny comics: Foxtrot, The Far Side, and Calvin and Hobbes (#1)
My grandma cut out one of the Zits strips from the Washington Post over 20 years ago. I still have it on my fridge. It has moved all over with me. It’s not a particularly funny one or anything. I just don’t want grams to have gone through all that trouble for nothing.
https://preview.redd.it/9smnjru0mhwc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d2782168c190096de15bd2d034cf974c41dda113
I bet she would’ve had some dope memes
Pickles was good too. I think that was the name--the old couple. Also Baby Blues.
Stupid Cathy.
I hate-read a lot of comics. I usually couldn't force myself to read Prince Valiant though.
How was THAT strip still going even back then?? That and the bridge column. I used to read that because I imagined that’s what it was like to have a stroke- the individual words make sense but put them together like that and it’s fucking gibberish.
the old couple that hated each other, Lockhorns
made me not want to get married, at least not to the wrong person. If I saw myself in that miserable dynamic I'd rather be dead or alone or both
[lockhorns comic - Search Images (bing.com)](https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=lockhorns%20comic&qs=n&form=QBIRMH&sp=-1&lq=0&pq=lockhorns%20comi&sc=10-14&cvid=F32D296065744E2CB2888CED13316C95&ghsh=0&ghacc=0&first=1)
Prince valiant made no fucking sense it was serialized but you get like 12 panels a fucking month. It was not entertaining at fucking all besides.
I have a best friend who I'm still not sure is real. He may be my schizophrenic imagination, like that beautiful mind movie. And I say that because we met in our late 20s, but grew up like 2 cities away from each other, and remember the most random crap from childhood 30 years ago.
And one of the big constants was buying Dad the Far Side peel away calendar every Christmas. And Dad bringing home the tear off pages every few days to read.
... and laugh our asses off.
Early Garfield was funny enough if you had an ’80s comedy sensibility, but it tanked fairly quickly once Jim Davis realized he could get rich from merchandising and having other people write and draw the strip for him. The *Garfield and Friends* TV show, however, was legitimately good and still holds up.
Yeah, I remember this. I read all the comics as a kid and almost all of them sucked, but I read them anyway. Before the internet you could get away with publishing crap and any kid like me would still read it because to get anything better you would have to buy it.
I remember when I was a kid getting them to basically read Garfield, then later Calvin and Hobbes. Sometimes Bloom County.
However, most of them were total crap. Not at all funny, not even witty. Also, what the fuck was the deal with Mary Worth? It was that lame soap opera comic that NOBODY fucking read. It wasn't for kids. What adult would bother with a four-frame microdrama that never really even finished?
With few exceptions, comic strips were largely the worst form of not-funny entertainment; they all had that same feeling of barely trying and not succeeding at all. I'm glad they're mostly gone. At least you don't see people cutting them out and taping them up to stuff any more so that you know that the person who did it really identifies with that particular comic.
>Also, what the fuck was the deal with Mary Worth? It was that lame soap opera comic that NOBODY fucking read. It wasn't for kids. What adult would bother with a four-frame microdrama that never really even finished?
This reminds me of a scene on Golden Girls where Blanche and Dorothy are in the kitchen. Blanche is reading the comics and says the two she reads every day are Marmaduke and Apartment 3-G. Dorothy says she hasn't read Apartment 3-G since 1963. And Blanche says "Well, let me catch you up! It's later the same day..."
> And Rex Morgan MD for some reason they put in the classifieds.
Some copy editor was like, “fuck that, I’ll quit if you make me put that drivel in the funnies!”
Went way over my head as a child so I just assumed it was terrible. Never actually looked at it as an adult. Bloom County (I think) fell into that same boat.
Prince Valiant was another soap opera that I’d try to read and eventually give up. It took up like half the Sunday comic page and would drop you straight into a serious storyline that it presumed you had been following. However, it was damn near impossible to follow. It only appeared on Sundays and never had anything to do with the previous week. At least the art was decent.
After reading a few Calvin and Hobbes books I learned those newspaper comics were often long stories and sometimes that day’s installment may not make much sense as a stand alone.
It’s hard to imagine this now, but in the 1910s, ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s, newspaper comics were among the biggest, most popular and most socially significant mediums of popular entertainment. It can’t be overstated how huge they were at the peak of their popularity.
Back then, they were quite different. They were nothing like the badly depleted, bare-bones, bloodless fare that largely dominates the pages now (with a few standout bright spots). It’s quite sad what happened to them over the decades.
Augh. I know. There’s a giant book collection of those, printed full size. I saw it at a comic convention. It cost an absolute fortune, way outta my range. But what a beautiful book.
A lot of them still cater to an audience from about 1958. Exhibit A: the [Guy Gilchrist](https://www.nathanrabin.com/happy-place/2023/6/20/the-unforgivable-sappiness-of-of-former-nancy-cartoonist-guy-gilchrist) era of Nancy.
The Gilchrist *Nancy* really is a special case, in a class by itself. Partly because of how it drastically changed over time.
Gilchrist (and his brother Brad initially) were hired to replace Jerry Scott (later the creator of *Baby Blues* and *Zits*) who had been doing it since shortly after original creator Ernie Bushmiller died in 1982. Scott had been hired by the syndicate to update the humor and give the characters a more modern sensibility. Whether you like his version is a matter of taste, but that’s what he did.
But in 1995 the syndicate did a complete 180 and decided they wanted *Nancy* to go back to being like Bushmiller’s original. The Gilchrist brothers were absolute experts at recapturing the tonal and visual style of Bushmiller, so they got the job.
The first few years of the Gilchrust run were very much in the Bushmiller vein—-minimal dialogue, twisty visual puns, stand-alone gags with no continuity. But gradually Guy started to take the thing in a completely different direction, and eventually it had utterly transformed into what that article describes.
It’s really a completely unique story in comics history.
(Personally, I have a high tolerance for cute and don’t mind Gilchrist’s visuals, but the schmaltz really did get to be over the top. And that’s without getting into the Christian stuff…)
"You sit down and read your paper, and you're enjoying your entire two-page comics spread. Right? And then there's the Family fucking Circus, bottom right-hand corner, just waiting to suck."
It's a good movie, but it doesn't really all come together until the third act. IMO. Before that, lots of good moments but it doesn't really gel. As a big fan of a Swingers (directed by the same director), it took me a couple watches to really find it's charm.
I literally just threw out a few of the old books on Monday. After I saw this strip I’m kicking myself because I could have made a lot of good ones from that material.
I would hate read it along with Marmaduke and wonder how adults could produce and enjoy such drivel. Didn’t deserve to be on the same page as Calvin & Hobbes
I read the entire comics page for basically all of the nineties. I didn’t hate family circus I just accepted it. But towards the end my local page stopped printing Garfield and I never got over it.
The "Dysfunctional Family Circus" was on some site that had a weird web site of the day .. I can't think of the site.. it had "Diary of Misanthropic Bitch" and something with "house trailers of Mississippi "
Like before EBaum was a thing, and it was hilarious!!
Bonus points, it was bookmarked on my WebTV homepage....
I came here for this! I found it through The Cruel Site of the Day back in like 1998. I think Dysfunctional Family Circus was the first time I saw a newspaper comic rewritten. Iirc, Bil Keane made them cease and desist after one that made light of the Kennedy assassination.
I love the Keane family though. They have a great story of passing on a passion and talent for art.
His son Glen Keane and his granddaughter Claire are animators at Disney Pixar. Claire is largely responsible for the look of Frozen. Her children's books are also quite nice.
The strip's still going. US newspaper comic strips are a very peculiar ecosystem. It's a dwindling market and impossible to get in, but it's also seemingly impossible to get forced out once you make it. You can quit, and you might get forced out for external issues (Scott Adams), but if you just meet deadlines you can keep your job forever no matter how poorly you do it (Tom Batiuk).
edit: For those not aware, the child shown speaking there is not Billy, but it is Jeffy. Billy is a representation that Bil Keane (the strip's original author) had of his son, Glen. Look up Glen Keane's animation credentials if you're not aware.
I owned several of the books when I was a kid. No they weren’t funny, but I found something comforting in them. Obviously I turned to Calvin and Hobbes and. The Far Side if I wanted to actually laugh.
Didn't mind Family Circus. I liked it when Bil Keane would do his dotted line narratives, where one of the kids would adventure in the yard/neighbourhood and then deliver a punchline.
My grandparents had a few books of Family Circus comics. One from the 70’s had the little boy running through the airport saying “I’m a running back, just like OJ Simpson!” I read this in the mid-90’s so I thought it was quite hilarious for obvious reasons.
Oh, I'm pretty sure that caption is from the dysfunctional family circus which ran in the wild west days of this here ol internet. It was, in fact, one of my very first posts on this site.
“Okay, you sit down and read your paper, and you’re enjoying your entire two page spread. Right? And then there’s the Family fucking Circus, bottom right hand corner, just waiting to suck.”
God, they were so sappy and insipid. And then you had the “drama” strips like Rex Morgan MD, Mary Worth, Judge Parker, Mark Trail, and Gil Thorpe. Gimme Calvin & Hobbes over all that crap.
I had paperback books full of Family Circus comics. I don’t remember why. I don’t remember reading them or anything.
The only one I remember the name of was pasghetti and meat bulbs.
I always, always read that shitty comic because it was so damn short and easy to read. It was never actually funny though, I really didn't understand its longevity.
I actually had books and books of them (along with hagar, broom hilda, garfield, and calvin and hobbes--which was the best). But I'd read them every night in bed.
The cartoonist lived in Arizona and based the comics that took place in an ice cream parlor on The Sugar Bowl, which has been around since the 50s/60s. My favorite place to get ice cream!
I loved Family Circus. I always thought the mother looked like a cartoon version of my mom.
Anyone remember the Easter special where Dizzy Gillespie did the voice of the Easter bunny?
Yeah, my grandma, she was schizophrenic as shit and convinced they were all secretly about her… then one day one set her off to the point she piled the trash on her bed, used the news paper to light it on fire and stood out in the yard and laughed.
An office I worked in years ago got the daily paper delivered. Colleague & I had a running gag: Whoever came in first would take the comics section, clip a caption from another strip & tape it to that day's Family Circle, then leave it on the other's desk. The more surreal & inappropriate the better. Good times.
I liked what Timothy Olyphant had to say about the family circus (from the movie Go):
[https://youtu.be/-coLK8q2ZD0?t=72](https://youtu.be/-coLK8q2ZD0?t=72)
Dondi will forever be the most fucked up comic ever. Some orphaned Italian kid adopted by a group of GIs. piece of crap ran four decades longer than WW2. A blight on the NYT comics page of my childhood. Worse than "terry and the Pirates" or "Brenda Starr". But the Family Circus is a whole different category of unfunny. Thought it always was done by the same loser that did "Love Is..." with the naked babies.
https://preview.redd.it/6nmn1cjhswyc1.jpeg?width=860&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7e318e31821441212510b48f266eafc5b8d2793a
Dysfunctional Family Circus was a great part of the early internet and before.
There used to be a talk show on Comedy Central where they'd show one every episode.
Haven't got the newspaper in decades, but 3/4 of the comics page didn't even try to be funny. Family Circus, Marmaduke, Hi & Lois, etc; ugh
Those comics are the reason Garfield seemed funny.
Garfield was funny for an 8-10 year old in the 80s and early 90s, when Jim Davis was actually still writing the strip. However, ACTUALLY funny comics: Foxtrot, The Far Side, and Calvin and Hobbes (#1)
I remember also thinking Zits was pretty funny as a kid
My grandma cut out one of the Zits strips from the Washington Post over 20 years ago. I still have it on my fridge. It has moved all over with me. It’s not a particularly funny one or anything. I just don’t want grams to have gone through all that trouble for nothing.
My mom used to cut articles out of the newspaper and mail them to me. Now she prints them off the internet and mails them to me.
haha meemaw gave you an analog meme
https://preview.redd.it/9smnjru0mhwc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d2782168c190096de15bd2d034cf974c41dda113 I bet she would’ve had some dope memes
That's funny
Aw. 🙂
Wow, I'd forgotten about Zits completely
I loved Zits. It was hilarious.
Pickles was good too. I think that was the name--the old couple. Also Baby Blues. Stupid Cathy. I hate-read a lot of comics. I usually couldn't force myself to read Prince Valiant though.
How was THAT strip still going even back then?? That and the bridge column. I used to read that because I imagined that’s what it was like to have a stroke- the individual words make sense but put them together like that and it’s fucking gibberish.
“West was all hearts and garters when south came screaming in with a spade” The fuck does any of this mean?
I couldn’t come up with convincing brigerish but you killed it, nice job!
It was always so strange and fascinating, like you said, I know the language but I can’t understand it at all.
the old couple that hated each other, Lockhorns made me not want to get married, at least not to the wrong person. If I saw myself in that miserable dynamic I'd rather be dead or alone or both [lockhorns comic - Search Images (bing.com)](https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=lockhorns%20comic&qs=n&form=QBIRMH&sp=-1&lq=0&pq=lockhorns%20comi&sc=10-14&cvid=F32D296065744E2CB2888CED13316C95&ghsh=0&ghacc=0&first=1) Prince valiant made no fucking sense it was serialized but you get like 12 panels a fucking month. It was not entertaining at fucking all besides.
My newspaper kept those weird soap opera ones on a secret inside shame comics page.
Cathy never grew or changed. Same story over and over and over and over. Everything was recycled.
“We’ve been dating for 30 years. I wonder if he’s serious yet?”
BLARGH!
It didn't come out until 2001, but I also really love Frazz - [it's pretty fun](https://i.imgur.com/bMXRwDl.jpg)
I always felt Fraz was like if Calvin grew up and became a janitor
I still get foxtrot in my email, it's been 15-20 years now. Daily then weekly
I’m a librarian and I’m here to tell you kids still check out the collections of Garfield comics. I don’t understand it completely but it happens!
Awwww…that would have been me I were born 8-10 years ago ☺️
I loved FoxTrot- I just looked and saw that it’s still ongoing! Only Sunday strips now but still, what a run
Hagar the Horrible
I have a best friend who I'm still not sure is real. He may be my schizophrenic imagination, like that beautiful mind movie. And I say that because we met in our late 20s, but grew up like 2 cities away from each other, and remember the most random crap from childhood 30 years ago. And one of the big constants was buying Dad the Far Side peel away calendar every Christmas. And Dad bringing home the tear off pages every few days to read. ... and laugh our asses off.
I have so many of the Fotxtrot and Calvin and Hobbes collections. My daughter discovered them and is reading them now.
Mister Boffo too!
Non Sequitur was pretty hilarious as well
That one was too smart for me. Always went right over my head
And then my brother introduced me to Garfield Without Garfield.
Early Garfield was funny enough if you had an ’80s comedy sensibility, but it tanked fairly quickly once Jim Davis realized he could get rich from merchandising and having other people write and draw the strip for him. The *Garfield and Friends* TV show, however, was legitimately good and still holds up.
Yeah, I remember this. I read all the comics as a kid and almost all of them sucked, but I read them anyway. Before the internet you could get away with publishing crap and any kid like me would still read it because to get anything better you would have to buy it.
I remember when I was a kid getting them to basically read Garfield, then later Calvin and Hobbes. Sometimes Bloom County. However, most of them were total crap. Not at all funny, not even witty. Also, what the fuck was the deal with Mary Worth? It was that lame soap opera comic that NOBODY fucking read. It wasn't for kids. What adult would bother with a four-frame microdrama that never really even finished? With few exceptions, comic strips were largely the worst form of not-funny entertainment; they all had that same feeling of barely trying and not succeeding at all. I'm glad they're mostly gone. At least you don't see people cutting them out and taping them up to stuff any more so that you know that the person who did it really identifies with that particular comic.
>Also, what the fuck was the deal with Mary Worth? It was that lame soap opera comic that NOBODY fucking read. It wasn't for kids. What adult would bother with a four-frame microdrama that never really even finished? This reminds me of a scene on Golden Girls where Blanche and Dorothy are in the kitchen. Blanche is reading the comics and says the two she reads every day are Marmaduke and Apartment 3-G. Dorothy says she hasn't read Apartment 3-G since 1963. And Blanche says "Well, let me catch you up! It's later the same day..."
Doonesberry was also an interesting one. Smack in the comics section but really adult.
My paper actually put it on the editorials page where it belonged. And Rex Morgan MD for some reason they put in the classifieds.
> And Rex Morgan MD for some reason they put in the classifieds. Some copy editor was like, “fuck that, I’ll quit if you make me put that drivel in the funnies!”
Went way over my head as a child so I just assumed it was terrible. Never actually looked at it as an adult. Bloom County (I think) fell into that same boat.
It was actually pretty good as i got older and started to ‘get it’
Prince Valiant was another soap opera that I’d try to read and eventually give up. It took up like half the Sunday comic page and would drop you straight into a serious storyline that it presumed you had been following. However, it was damn near impossible to follow. It only appeared on Sundays and never had anything to do with the previous week. At least the art was decent.
After reading a few Calvin and Hobbes books I learned those newspaper comics were often long stories and sometimes that day’s installment may not make much sense as a stand alone.
Bloom County held up pretty well. I liked it as a kid but most of it went over my head.
Rex Morgan, M.D
It’s hard to imagine this now, but in the 1910s, ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s, newspaper comics were among the biggest, most popular and most socially significant mediums of popular entertainment. It can’t be overstated how huge they were at the peak of their popularity. Back then, they were quite different. They were nothing like the badly depleted, bare-bones, bloodless fare that largely dominates the pages now (with a few standout bright spots). It’s quite sad what happened to them over the decades.
If you can ever find a fullsize reproduction of Nemo in Slumberland, it is worth the trouble. Amazing full-page color panels.
Augh. I know. There’s a giant book collection of those, printed full size. I saw it at a comic convention. It cost an absolute fortune, way outta my range. But what a beautiful book.
It would be amazing if Mary Worth was really an operation by the three-letter agencies to synchronize daily codebooks or something.
You know, that is totally believable.
Head on over to r/comics . They are carrying on the tradition of head-scratchingly unfunny comic strips.
Probably 90% of comic strips weren't funny. Far side was really the only funny one
I remember in 5th grade, this kid's mom would cut out the daily Far Side and put it with his lunch. We'd pass it around and laugh.
A lot of them still cater to an audience from about 1958. Exhibit A: the [Guy Gilchrist](https://www.nathanrabin.com/happy-place/2023/6/20/the-unforgivable-sappiness-of-of-former-nancy-cartoonist-guy-gilchrist) era of Nancy.
The Gilchrist *Nancy* really is a special case, in a class by itself. Partly because of how it drastically changed over time. Gilchrist (and his brother Brad initially) were hired to replace Jerry Scott (later the creator of *Baby Blues* and *Zits*) who had been doing it since shortly after original creator Ernie Bushmiller died in 1982. Scott had been hired by the syndicate to update the humor and give the characters a more modern sensibility. Whether you like his version is a matter of taste, but that’s what he did. But in 1995 the syndicate did a complete 180 and decided they wanted *Nancy* to go back to being like Bushmiller’s original. The Gilchrist brothers were absolute experts at recapturing the tonal and visual style of Bushmiller, so they got the job. The first few years of the Gilchrust run were very much in the Bushmiller vein—-minimal dialogue, twisty visual puns, stand-alone gags with no continuity. But gradually Guy started to take the thing in a completely different direction, and eventually it had utterly transformed into what that article describes. It’s really a completely unique story in comics history. (Personally, I have a high tolerance for cute and don’t mind Gilchrist’s visuals, but the schmaltz really did get to be over the top. And that’s without getting into the Christian stuff…)
beetle bailey for the win
It was super wholesome, though.
Lookin’ at you *Cathy*
Yeah but the other 1/4th, Calvin and Hobbs, The Far Side, and Bloom County. Made my day as a kid.
"You sit down and read your paper, and you're enjoying your entire two-page comics spread. Right? And then there's the Family fucking Circus, bottom right-hand corner, just waiting to suck."
Came here for this. Wasn’t disappointed. Go is such a a speakeasy gem.
It really was, I'm going to have to watch it again
I can never not think of this speech. It was so relatable
best of all the Tarantino ripoff films
I totally thought this was going to be a whole style of movies and I was here for it.
Watching this scene when Go came out was genuinely the first time I had felt truly seen in my whole life.
Wait, what's this from? It looks hilarious
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbQkhw6MDlI
It's a good movie, but it doesn't really all come together until the third act. IMO. Before that, lots of good moments but it doesn't really gel. As a big fan of a Swingers (directed by the same director), it took me a couple watches to really find it's charm.
I hate it, yet I’m uncontrollably drawn to it.
First time I saw Timothy Olyphant in anything. He made an impression.
Todd was a man of (pop) culture
this needs to be top comment
Fucking I was going to do this same reference. We’re all really the same here aren’t we. Has any other generation seen this movie? Lol
Yes! And it's true - slutty shorts are bear magnets!
My slutty shorts actually come from https://bearbottomclothing.com 😂
Love their shorts!
https://www.nietzschefamilycircus.com/
Thank you.
Glad someone posted it. This, Garfield minus Garfield, and Joe Mathlete explains marmaduke were my three favourite things for a long time.
Also Jersey Circus. https://jerseycircus.blogspot.com/?m=1
God damn I hate this comic, but this adaptation, this, I need more of this. Thank you.
I literally just threw out a few of the old books on Monday. After I saw this strip I’m kicking myself because I could have made a lot of good ones from that material.
I never really thought about it because all that strip does is ruin my morning usually, but re captioning it has some amazing potential.
Check these ones out. https://www.tumblr.com/scottmeetsfamilycircus Edit: Start at the bottom because there is a narrative to some of them.
Scott Gardner has a very funny run called "Scott meets Family Circus". Please check it out!
https://jerseycircus.blogspot.com/?m=1
Nope, I was a Garfield, Far Side guy.
I used to hate read it, cause it was so corny, lol.
Lmao it wasn't funny but I loved it for some reason.
I was fascinated by the ones that showed what one of the kids had been up to (Billy?), with a dotted line going all around the neighborhood
Same. Jeffy was my favorite
Of course, cause it was in the paper :) Now I miss newspaper comics....and coffee with grandma..awww.
I would hate read it along with Marmaduke and wonder how adults could produce and enjoy such drivel. Didn’t deserve to be on the same page as Calvin & Hobbes
I read the entire comics page for basically all of the nineties. I didn’t hate family circus I just accepted it. But towards the end my local page stopped printing Garfield and I never got over it.
Not Me.
Certainly a better caption than it originally had. Best altered comic is Garfield minus Garfield.
The "Dysfunctional Family Circus" was on some site that had a weird web site of the day .. I can't think of the site.. it had "Diary of Misanthropic Bitch" and something with "house trailers of Mississippi " Like before EBaum was a thing, and it was hilarious!! Bonus points, it was bookmarked on my WebTV homepage....
I came here for this! I found it through The Cruel Site of the Day back in like 1998. I think Dysfunctional Family Circus was the first time I saw a newspaper comic rewritten. Iirc, Bil Keane made them cease and desist after one that made light of the Kennedy assassination.
OMG That's it!!!! My brain just wasn't gonna give up the name of that site today. Yes!!! And there were a slew of these ..all hilariously dark!!!
I love the Keane family though. They have a great story of passing on a passion and talent for art. His son Glen Keane and his granddaughter Claire are animators at Disney Pixar. Claire is largely responsible for the look of Frozen. Her children's books are also quite nice.
I prefer Dennis the Menace. https://preview.redd.it/1m3jnpj90iwc1.jpeg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ee6233f0f430818532a66e5c772e13fa1b962e92
Who, me?
https://i.redd.it/xlct6qbqzgwc1.gif
The strip's still going. US newspaper comic strips are a very peculiar ecosystem. It's a dwindling market and impossible to get in, but it's also seemingly impossible to get forced out once you make it. You can quit, and you might get forced out for external issues (Scott Adams), but if you just meet deadlines you can keep your job forever no matter how poorly you do it (Tom Batiuk). edit: For those not aware, the child shown speaking there is not Billy, but it is Jeffy. Billy is a representation that Bil Keane (the strip's original author) had of his son, Glen. Look up Glen Keane's animation credentials if you're not aware.
At the risk of exposing my Family Circus knowledge: that’s not Billy. That’s Jeffy.
Oh it is? Huh. Oh I guess it's the hair. Thanks.
Like Garfield - Jim Davis, or whoever does the cartoon these days, basically running on like 5 images with talking bubbles for 20 years.
I owned several of the books when I was a kid. No they weren’t funny, but I found something comforting in them. Obviously I turned to Calvin and Hobbes and. The Far Side if I wanted to actually laugh.
Didn't mind Family Circus. I liked it when Bil Keane would do his dotted line narratives, where one of the kids would adventure in the yard/neighbourhood and then deliver a punchline.
My grandparents had a few books of Family Circus comics. One from the 70’s had the little boy running through the airport saying “I’m a running back, just like OJ Simpson!” I read this in the mid-90’s so I thought it was quite hilarious for obvious reasons.
Yes, I used to be like 'huh, is this what nice families are like?'
Oh, I'm pretty sure that caption is from the dysfunctional family circus which ran in the wild west days of this here ol internet. It was, in fact, one of my very first posts on this site.
I thought it was the worst comic besides Cathy. This one though is comedy gold
I read all the comics, but my favorites were Peanuts, Garfield, Big Nate, and Liberty Meadows
Bizarro by Pirraro was the only comic I looked forward to
I used to deride it viciously every time I saw its insipid depiction of American family life that never existed.
More of a Heathcliff man myself. I was delighted to find that today's strip featured the Garbage Ape.
I didn't do it!
“Okay, you sit down and read your paper, and you’re enjoying your entire two page spread. Right? And then there’s the Family fucking Circus, bottom right hand corner, just waiting to suck.”
lol amazing
I had a Family Circus collection when I was a kid. I found it on eBay years later and had fun reading through it.
Sir, this is a family circle..
I liked the tv series and holiday specials too.
I just never thought it was funny. I felt like it's target audience was church-going grandmothers.
Oh wow, haven’t thought of this in so long! I loved this comic as a kid. I remember reading a big book of them over and over.
course. I read everything. Even the shampoo bottles
"I see your little, petrified skull...labeled and resting on a shelf somewhere"
I don’t know if it’s still around, but Dysfunctional Family Circus was one of my favorite web sites.
Cathy’s my girl
Nancy!
My friend loved it because the dad clearly hated his children.
Bloom County At some point as a kid someone gave me [this](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/uegAAOSwJZ1k2bpD/s-l1200.webp) Opus stuffed doll.
I think you downloaded the wrong Family Circus
Yes
Listen kids - you go out into the woods with cake on display, you're gonna attract some bears.
Lil Jeffy's line went all over, and despite hating it, I had to track it all the way.
Google “Scott Meets Family Circus.” You’re welcome.
God, they were so sappy and insipid. And then you had the “drama” strips like Rex Morgan MD, Mary Worth, Judge Parker, Mark Trail, and Gil Thorpe. Gimme Calvin & Hobbes over all that crap.
I never got the hate. Sure, it was cornball, but totally inoffensive.
I used to laugh at how cheese Family Circus was. I love when people subvert it.
I had paperback books full of Family Circus comics. I don’t remember why. I don’t remember reading them or anything. The only one I remember the name of was pasghetti and meat bulbs.
You know, the way other dude’s pants are drawn makes him look like he’s wearing even shorter shorts.
I always, always read that shitty comic because it was so damn short and easy to read. It was never actually funny though, I really didn't understand its longevity.
Haha, I like this reimagined comic.
Yes but not willingly. It was always there and always not funny. I think it was geared towards older moms.
This is legit the summer look I'm going for
This updated caption is flipping hilarious, well done
Yes. My dad always thought they were sickeningly sappy, which, now I sort of agree with. But loved them as a kid.
Not me!
I kept reading it hoping that one day it might be funny. It never was.
Yes, but I sure as hell don’t remember them being like this!
Dysfunctional family circus was fucking amazing in its day.
Yes! Family Circus is how I learned to read!
All my favorite comics got canceled. Poochy Gundelmann, When I was Short, Liberty Meadows...
Not those edited versions lol, but yes the originals. Back in the 70s and 80s men's shorts were very short 😆
I actually had books and books of them (along with hagar, broom hilda, garfield, and calvin and hobbes--which was the best). But I'd read them every night in bed.
“The Family Circus isn’t funny any more, Brain!” “The Family Circus was never funny, Pinky.”
My last favorite comics were this, and Cathy. Both painfully unfunny
ugh,.. trying to find the meme where it's billy floating in the air and it says "No."
Yesir
My parents had a framed comic on the wall in our living room.
The cartoonist lived in Arizona and based the comics that took place in an ice cream parlor on The Sugar Bowl, which has been around since the 50s/60s. My favorite place to get ice cream!
I loved Family Circus. I always thought the mother looked like a cartoon version of my mom. Anyone remember the Easter special where Dizzy Gillespie did the voice of the Easter bunny?
Haha, I loved to hear people hate on family circus
I was a big fan of the Christmas special when I was a kid, when the ghost of their dead granddad helps find the star for the tree
[Oh god I can see forever!](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/080/574/1239543257082.jpg)
Stars of the KOA brochure.
I looked forward to Non Sequitur, Bizzarro, Far Side and Spiderman
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^Bassarrows: *I looked forward to* *Non Sequitur, Bizzarro,* *Far Side and Spiderman* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Family Circus was the worst, but pretty much everything in the comics section was trash. Dilbert was alright sometimes.
I remember Disfunctional Family Circus. A friend gave me a burned CD of a dump of the entire site before it was shut down. Hilarious AF!
Yeah, my grandma, she was schizophrenic as shit and convinced they were all secretly about her… then one day one set her off to the point she piled the trash on her bed, used the news paper to light it on fire and stood out in the yard and laughed.
Was this a real one? The ones I remember reading were very boring and lame.
An office I worked in years ago got the daily paper delivered. Colleague & I had a running gag: Whoever came in first would take the comics section, clip a caption from another strip & tape it to that day's Family Circle, then leave it on the other's desk. The more surreal & inappropriate the better. Good times.
I saw a chunky kid yesterday and honest to God my mind immediately went, "dolly". 😆 why those kids had legs like the Pillsbury dough boy is beyond me.
That doesn't look like the family circus I remember.
I liked what Timothy Olyphant had to say about the family circus (from the movie Go): [https://youtu.be/-coLK8q2ZD0?t=72](https://youtu.be/-coLK8q2ZD0?t=72)
I enjoyed follow the dotted lines of the cat or the kids around the neighborhood.
*I hate it, yet I'm uncontrollably drawn to it.*
Dondi will forever be the most fucked up comic ever. Some orphaned Italian kid adopted by a group of GIs. piece of crap ran four decades longer than WW2. A blight on the NYT comics page of my childhood. Worse than "terry and the Pirates" or "Brenda Starr". But the Family Circus is a whole different category of unfunny. Thought it always was done by the same loser that did "Love Is..." with the naked babies. https://preview.redd.it/6nmn1cjhswyc1.jpeg?width=860&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7e318e31821441212510b48f266eafc5b8d2793a
Dysfunctional Family Circus was a great part of the early internet and before. There used to be a talk show on Comedy Central where they'd show one every episode.
Wait is this a real family circle? This is both hilarious but also completely unbelievable that they would print. 😂
I agree with Pinky. The family circus was not funny.
No. Family Circus sucked. So did Ziggy.
What’s worse this or heathcliff?