Bil Keane, the creator of the famous “Family Circus” comic, died late Tuesday at the age of 89. His comic graced the funny pages in newspapers throughout the U.S. for decades, beginning in 1960 and continuing in syndication until the present day. It was featured in almost 1,500 newspapers throughout the U.S. Keane often described his one-panel comic as simplistic because he wanted to offer consistency to his readers. In an interview in the 1990s, Keane noted, “It’s reassuring, I think, to the American public to see the same family.”
Keane did update the comic to include references to pop culture, but there were also timeless elements to the strip, including the fact that the children, Billy, Jeffy, Dolly and P.J., never grew up. Noted Keane in an interview, “We are, in the comics, the last frontier of good, wholesome family humor and entertainment. On radio and television, magazines and the movies, you can’t tell what you’re going to get. When you look at the comic page, you can usually depend on something acceptable by the entire family.”
The late Charles M. Schulz, creator of the “Peanuts” and a friend of Keane’s, once said, “I think we share a care for the same type of humor. We’re both family men with children and look with great fondness at our families.” Keane had also previously noted that his strip really took off in the mid-1960s when he put out a comic that focused on family rather than humor. Noted Keane, “It showed Jeffy coming out of the living room late at night in pajamas and Mommy and Daddy watching television and Jeffy says, ‘I don’t feel so good, I think I need a hug.’ And suddenly I got a lot mail from people about this dear little fella needing a hug, and I realized that there was something more than just getting a belly laugh every day.”
