Family Circus Library Vol. 1

by Robert Greenberger

There’s a special skill required to successfully entertain with a single panel gag strip. It’s an even rarer skill to actually develop a cast of recurring characters and let you get to know them through the years. And that’s exactly what Bil Keane accomplished with his Family Circus. His gentle humor resonated immediately with readers as the American Nuclear Family took the spotlight as the 1950s wound down.

His panel debuted on that rarest of dates February 29, in 1960 and now readers of all ages can relive those early gags in the first volume of The Family Circus Library coming from IDW’s successful Library of American Comics in November. The initial book will collect the first two years of daily and Sunday strips, starting from the very beginning, February 29, 1960, making this an early 50th anniversary event. You can skip the existing 89 collected editions and go back to those early days of the Keane family in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The comic strips that launched around that time were reflective of America post-World War II. People were getting married and starting families so the strips mirrored that as seen here with Steve and Thelma raising Billy, Dolly, and Jeffy. Much as Hank Ketchum based Dennis the Menace on his own son, years before, so too did Keane base the strip on his own circumstances. (Steve was renamed Bill after a few years.)

The single panel had a circular border with the dialogue usually written beneath, letting the image work as a snapshot, hence the original title of Family Circle until the same-named magazine objected. Keane decided it looked enough like a circus ring to alter the strip to the current Family Circus.

Unlike Ketchum, the family dynamic was different given multiple children plus the addition of baby PJ in 1962. The extended family played a larger role and to Keane’s credit, he did not shy away from having one of the Grandfather’s being dead, using his spirit for the occasional gentle tug on the heartstrings.

The strip showed the struggles of raising a growing family along with the “kids say the darndest things” recurring theme. Perhaps the strip’s best known contribution to the culture are the famed Sunday pages when Billy was asked to fetch something and the dotted lines showed the circuitous route he tended to take with a humorous conclusion. To this day, people use that describe what their own exploits have been like. The first of those will be included in volume one.

These days, the daily and Sunday strips are written by Keane and inked/colored by his son, Jeff Keane. Back in the day, though, Keane did all the work himself. As early as 1962, Keane would run a week or so of the strip in a cruder style, implying that six-year old Billy was drawing the strip while Dad was on vacation. Billy was modeled after Keane’s son Glen, currently one of the premier animators at Disney.

The Family Circus succeeded not because it broke new ground, but because it trod familiar ground with affection and a clean line from Keane’s brush. Parents liked seeing their lives reflected in the panels while kids thought the children were likable friends. And fifty years later, the gags still hold up because when it comes to family life, few things change.

Purchase:

Family Circus Library Vol. 1 HC