Bill Keane of The Family Circus Dies

Bill Keane who wrote The Family Circus comic strip for decades died last week. I love and collect the Charles Schulz collections of Peanuts but Keane was also a wonderful cartoonist. Certainly his strips were more sacharine and sweet than the Peanuts strips and with no sharp edges as almost all of the strips today.

Told in one board with a caption rather than the traditional panel strip Keane showed us life as many of us in suburbia knew it. Billy, Jeffy, Dolly and PJ were children that never grew up in the land of comic strips. I read a great deal of them in the papers and always found a smile.

Many stick with me but one story I remember is this. My son in his early little league days had not got a call advising his game was cancelled. It was raining so hard that the water was rushing down the street, a downpour for hours. It made me remember a strip seen years ago of Billy with his uniform on, bat over his shoulder, asking his Mom " How she knew the game was cancelled" as through the window we saw the rain pouring down.

Certainly Keane's strip came from a different time and generation. His son however has been doing the strip for the last few years and it will continue. Not edgy but still as long as people have adorable young children who say cute things it will be relevant. That is something to be thankful for.