I thought comic strips were supposed to be funny.

This is just about the most insipid comic in mass distribution, and that's really saying something.

I've always loved the Family Circus. When I was a child, and first learning to 'read' the comics, I could often 'read' Family Circus without needing to read it! The storys were about kids just like me, and I understood it. Unlike most of the others. Now that I'm an adult, sure, the strips tell the same story over and over in different ways, but the story is about life, specifically, life with kids. I read it, and envision the future when I have the same.. wonderful?.. experiences with my own child. My favorite strips were always the ones with 'ida no' and 'knot me'.

One of those strips which is so awful and ultimately pointless that you can build an entire mythology around it, which is just what some folks did back in the 90s with "The Dysfunctional Family Circus", which King Features syndicate issued a cease-and-desist order to constrain.

This-------strip--------is--------always------- the--------same. How------do-------I------make------a-------loop-de-loop?

Why all the trash talk about this wonderful, wholesome, loving American family? I suppose so many come from bad households anymore.

I'd love to see what Calvin could do to this bunch of half-wits with his flamethrower.

Lighthearted and ...that's about it. Not funny or worth the space in the papers

I think that is weird that the kids (especially the baby) never age, maybe their are actually vampires!

I think Go said it better than I ever can. The whole time I've read it I've encountered only one joke that was even marginally amusing. Still occasionally hilarious in a very unintentional way. If you want to recycle this garbage into something useful try this at home, cut out the Family Circus without the caption, put it on the house bulletin board, and have anyone who feels like it write a new caption.

Repellent beyond words, but I'll try.... Nope, can't do it. Just...I can't bear the idea that this family is presented as wholesome and healthy and therefore as an ideal. I'm not a big fan of cutsie kiddy comics at the best of times and combining this with the truly vomit worthy drawing gives the Family Circus a place in the comics Hall of Shame.

Horrible, horrible, horrible. Why is it taking up valuable newspaper space?!

Whenever I mistakenly read this crap, I become angry and physically ill. Wish I had seen the Dysfunctional Family Circus when it was available. If I ever run into Bil Keane or any of his fatass kids, I swear to God I will stab them all to death with a pitchfork.

Family Circus has been around for a long time.I suppose at times it can be humorous. But this is not as good as Peanuts,FarSide, or Calvin and Hobbes. I think it can be a bit too sappy. Sometimes I think that this strip is trying too hard to be cute.the kids in the strip are okay but I do not find them anywhere near as endearing as the Peanuts characaters for example.

Gag me with a spoon. This is the all-time lowest of the low strip. Preachy and sacchrine.

The most repititive, moronic unfunny comic strip series ever. I have never found anything witty or humorous in Family Circus. The comic is insipid, pointless, and stupid.

What the hell is this crap! For the longest time I've been trying to figure out why this is in the comics section. I've seen car crashes funnier than this.

I know many people accuse Family Circus of being too sappy, sweet, and saccharine, but I happen to love this strip. I think the kids are adorable, the strip is heart-warming and funny, and I like a strip that shows some good, Christian values.

I still see Bil Kene as one of the greats. In the early 60s his panel was hysterical. Coming from a family of four, many of his panels hit home with me. Now it's not as funny but it still takes me home. I can't help it I have respect for the masters and to me Bil Kene is one of them! ~Erg!

Just plain dumb. That's about all you can say about it.

Just horrid. There is nothing cute about these kids and why are they still four or five years old? Yeah, yeah, I know, it's a comic strip, but when will this grow old and just die?

So much suger I got dental caries. Not funny. Old fashioned.

This comic makes me wish i didn't ever pick up the sunday paper. It's always the last thing you read, and it sucks- it messes up your entire comic reading experience. It's right up there with Doonesbury. I try to skip over it, but its always there, WAITING TO SUCK (Like they say in Go). I have to read it anyways, hoping one day it will NOT SUCK, but it always dissapoints me... always. Isn't there a point in time where things just have TO END?! I think this is one of them, for real. Rest In Pieces family circus...... please.

Very cute and funny.

it's the coolest comic strip and i wish it would go on forever

In my view, FAM CIRCUS is an effective demonstration of the need for family planning and contraception. I wince when I see it, but I find it unavoidable, like a bloody traffic accident. Just reading this panel can raise one's blood sugar level dangerously. *BUT--I met Keane once at a cartoonists' literacy campaign, where a dozen syndicated artist convened to draw big panels that were intended for auction. Billingsly, Browne, Walker, Lazarus, Arnold Roth (an idol of mine), et al, showed up. The MC was a bore, and Keane eventually siezed the mike and took over--he was a hoot-! Resplendent in a plaid jacket, bowtie and big glasses, Keane had everyone laughing and bidding like crazy for the art--unexpectedly funny & nice guy--after this, I always felt that the FAM CIRCUS gags were deliberately obnoxious (hey--it works for advertisements...you remember the bad ones...).

Sometimes it's delectably cute. Sometimes it's too evangelistic. Sometimes the grandfather's angel comes in out of place. Sometimes the nifty-fifties idealist washup makes me want to barf. The rest of the time, it strikes me neither one way nor another.

Years ago, when I was a young kid reading the funny pages, this strip was amusing at least some of the time. But it ran its course a long time ago. It suffers from a permanent case of the stale "cuties," and is not funny or even creative. It keeps running the same few gags...e.g., the kids are supposed to go on an errand and instead of going straight there, they do countless other things along the way, punctuated for the reader by a meandering dotted line. That was pretty good the first time, but then it was repeated over & over until the reader became embarassed with it. And those insane characters with names like "I dunno" and "Not Me" were dumb the first time around, and grow more insipid with each repitition.

Hah! this strip is about a picture perfect 50's family with a happy life & all that blarney crap. And if that doesn't sound good, it's stereotypical images are MINDLESS! This strip really sucks.

The second worst strip in the newspaper world. 'Not Me'! 'Ida know'!?!?! Maybe, maybe, it was funny once, in 1962. I agree with blox's post. The only time the Family Circus made me laugh was when I saw the movie 'Go' and shouted at the screen- YES YES!

It's too cutsie and too behind the times. There's never a family this perfect this day and age.

This is an okay little strip, nothing offensive but nothing earth-shattering either. I've never found it especially funny, but it's one that I usually wind up reading anyway.

The most horrible comic ever made. At first it may have been cute and even had some small amount of warm fuzzy humor attached to it. But now it has become the epitome of Uncreativity. Every third comic is Billy Draws the comic or that stupid line thing. It's a Bomb of Retardation that gets put into the Comics and should be wiped off of its pages for all time. I would give it less than one star if I could, but I can't so it remains at one.

Like one reviewer said, this also was the first comic strip that I read and it holds a special place in my heart as well. BUT I have to admit that I don't really care about it as much as I used to. Nowadays it just seems too cutesy and sugary-sweet, nothing at all like it used to be. It also seems to focus on God more than it used to. And dead Granddad seems to show up a lot more than he used to. Doesn't that strike anyone as creepy? I REALLY miss the DFC. I never got a chance to read every strip that was on the site before they took it away. But I do my *own* DFC, in a way. I have a lot of old "Family Circus" books and I would take a strip, read it and come up with a funny comment that the person that they are talking to would say. (Example= Dolly: "Stop wastin' wood, Billy! It doesn't grow on trees, y'know." Billy: "Don't you have laundry to do, woman?") If, for some reason, you want to read some more, just send me a comment saying that you want to see some and leave an e-mail.

I thought the oldest Family Circus cartoons--from 1960--were all right. They were just plain average cartoons (what you might find in the Saturday Evening Post or a similar publication). But then it didn't seem as sappy as what runs today. Those cartoons often had stories--for example, Jeffy having his tonsils taken out--that people could identify with. Nowadays, the kids never age, the kids just mouth off cute lines, and everyone is so perfect. Yecch! Can't Mommy and Daddy have a divorce or a problem with careers or moving for crying out loud??? A few years ago, one person ran a parody on the internet--the Dysfunctional Family Circus--where people submitted their own captions for selected cartoons. Those were usually obscene, but many of them were more thoughtful and more insightful than the ones written by the creators of the original Family Circus themselves. It's too bad that the lawyers representing the syndicators of The Family Circus forced the fellow running the Dysfunctional Family Circus to end his parody. To me, that means that the creators of the real Family Circus are too thin-skinned to take a joke among other things. But I am afraid that there will always be newspapers which will want to run the real Family Circus and there are no signs that it will fade away any time soon, unfortunately. (I'd like to give The Family Circus no stars, but I can't find any way to do so.)

A sweet cartoon that still evokes kindness and compassion despite the fact the children never age.

If I could give it a Zero, I would. Even "Hi and Lois" is slightly better than this. If you want to read a bunch of dull, suburban kids in a completely idealistic, bland, and sanitized existence, then read on. I get the feeling that this strip's creator is on helium. Why else would he portray such a saccharine, phoney picture of family life and publish it every day? Get this junk out of the newspapers.

This is a pretty awful comic! I useally just glance at the strip( or circle), but the jokes are pretty lame. Like for instince, Who Wants to be a Millionaire is on telivision, and Little Billy says after a few seconds, why is'nt no one talkin'? Dosen't everyone want to be rich? THIS COMIC IS VERY LAME! PLEASE DO NOT WAST YOUR 10 SECONDS REAFING IT!! PLEASE!!

This comic is banal beyond belief. Unfortunately, a capacity for humor does not seem to be part of the psychological makeup of the strip's creator, Bil Keane. To make up for this deficiency, he relies upon the "cuteness" of its child characters in hopes that it will appeal to the readers. For example, one panel shows little Jeffy with a bleeding knee, saying "Mommy, I'm spillin' my leg!"; the readers are supposed to think that's "cute." But to me and many others, it's just asinine. I remember a scene in the movie "Go", in which one of the film's characters talks about how the Family Circus destroyed the weekend comics because no matter how good the rest of the comics were, it was overshadowed by the Family Circus at the bottom of the page just waiting to suck. That quote encapsulates my feelings completely. In defense of the fans, obviously there are enough of you who still enjoy the dotted-line trails, the creepy ghost grandparents, and the Billy-fills-in-for-dad routines, to keep the strip alive. To each his/her own.

Next to For Better or For Worse, it's my favorite comic strip.

Was funny back in 1975, maybe. Now the material is very, very dated.

Do you remember when this was funny? Neither do I, and I'm old.

love it! love it! think the artist has a camera inside my house while chrildren were growing up.

Talk about sappy! I'm nauseated by the "cute little kid" humor.

A very sweet comic strip. Probably appreciated more by people who actually have children, but I manage to find humor and sentiment in it.

HELP MEEEEEE!! Tell me please who pays this guy??? Circles with chubby bodies and they syndicate him?!? Go figure.

As a kid, Family Circus was probably the first comic that I read regularly, so it holds a special place in my heart.

If you want to drain all the life out of me, make me read Family Circus, watch "7th Heaven" on TV, and listen to an Amy Grant CD. That triple threat is guaranteed to create an imprenetrable bubble of fuzzy blandness.