As anyone who's read my earlier rants about such vital concerns as the neighborhood grocery store or obscure political conspiracies would know, I'm not the kind to fixate. Well, at least until I flip through the paper to the comics, where the nefarious Family Circus (to quote the movie Go) "is just sitting there in the corner, waiting to suck."
Friends have called the cartoon's treacley, octogenerian author, one Mr. Bil (that's with one "l") Keane, the "anti-Toner" -- perhaps the highest complement I have ever been paid.
But I digress. My favorite Web site for many years was the Dysfunctional Family Circus, which let the well-balanced, emotionally healthy populace of the Web rewrite the cartoon's captions -- with predictable results, right down to the spelling ("daddy i poopd on the flor"). But as the Internet was transformed into the strip mall it is today, the lawyers shut it down with equally predictable speed, leaving concerned citizens like myself to digest the following cartoon alone:
Let's stop for a moment to consider this tableau. Bil looks like he hasn't slept in days (the black-and-white version that ran in the paper shows a nice growth of stubble). Judging by the stains on his clothing, he appears to have awoken in a pool of his own essence. He's holding a crumpled bag, which appears to conceal a bottle or other cylindrical object.
Questions... questions. Why are he and Dolly (yes, I know the random kids' names) wandering out of an alley? Did Thel, awakening from her own herion-induced stupor in an empty bed, send her daughter downtown to check the dumpsters for Bil's naked corpse? And who is this mystery Mrs. Clarke, and why exactly does Dolly want her to meet her father?
The mind boggles. Maybe there's more to Mr. Keane’s "art" than initially meets the eye. After all, art imitates life, and in life there are no easy answers. We've all awoken in a pile of our own sick (metaphorically speaking, of course), and we all have our Mrs. Clarkes that we'd rather not see in our moments of weakness.
Or then again, maybe Bil's just a really crappy artist.