Family Circus of Life

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Who's Going to See Bil Keane Alive Again? Not me....

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Looks Like Billy’s Going to Have to Draw the Strip This Week

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Who pulled the plug on Bil's ventilator? Ida know.
(Props to Mark)
You know those annoying people who can’t wait to tell you about the latest #@@#$@ing adorable thing their kids did, or about their latest assault on the English language, or about the latest household device their kids broke/lost/defecated on in the cutest way? Now imagine one of those jackasses raped your ear with this tedium every morning for the last 51 years. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Bil Keane, who succumbed to congestive heart failure at the age of 89, joining Ziggy braintrust Tom Wilson as hack cartoonists who went from a single panel to a panel van this fall. Brad Anderson, watch your ass. Bil started inflicting the inane, humorless daily activities of Mom, Dad, Dolly, Billy, Jeffy, PJ, Grandma, and, from beyond the grave, Grandpa in 1960, repeating them on a roughly 13-week cycle, knowing that no one read the damn thing unless they were stuck at their in-laws and wanted to avoid talking about why there aren’t any grandchildren yet. Keane was popular among other inept and tiresome cartoonists, counting Jeff MacNelly (Shoe), Stephen Pastis (Pearls Before Swine) and Bill Griffith (Zippy the Pinhead) among his friends, swapping strips with Scott Adams (Dilbert) for an April Fool’s joke, while ripping the brilliant Bill Watterson first for insisting on half-page spreads for his lovingly drawn Sunday Calvin and Hobbes strips, then for retiring when he was still at the top of his game. Keane’s funeral procession will start at Scottsdale Funeral Home funeral home, progress down Elm Street, stop at a puddle, will tightrope walk down a fence, poke its head in a dog house, climb a tree, play in a birdbath, weave in and out of trees and kick a soccer ball before arriving at the cemetery.