If you compare Jeffy's body in today's Family Circus to Jeffy's body in yesterday's Family Circus, you will see that he appears to have grown a foot overnight. Since this is, of course, impossible, we can only assume that Bil and Jeff Keane are not telling the story of the Keane clan in chronological order, but that The Family Circus is, in fact, an especially subtle example of a nonlinear narrative.This raises a great many questions and will no doubt force readers to analyze the daily cartoon on a deeper level. For example, what are we now to make of what seemed at the time to be lazy continuity errors? Or lazy drawing? Is Jeffy's murderous behavior a future event or has it already consumed his soul? And if it is a future event, is it set in stone? Or is the future malleable? Is Sunday's cartoon an example of two possible futures? Or perhaps parallel universes? Is Jeffy's comment in today's cartoon a clue that parallel universes are, in fact, the key to unlocking the mysteries of The Family Circus?
Only time, as it were, will tell.
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