Family Circus: Mommy, will you tell Billy to come closer? I can't hit him with my snowball from there.

Jeez, Jeffy, I suppose you need your Mommy's help with your serial killing too?

Family Circus: It's APPARENT you're A PARENT...

First of all, when you start your comic with a rhyme, the whole thing should be in rhyme. That it's not is very disappointing. Secondly, I assume that the focus on the parents here is what's supposed to justify the setting apart of these cartoons into a single Sunday comic, but there's no real reason these couldn't have worked as daily cartoons. So it's kind of lazy in that way, too.

As for the individual cartoons themselves: the first one is hilarious because Bill and Thel evidently sleep in separate beds;* the second one is hilarious because nobody would ever actually say this; and the third one is hilarious because "peanut butter" is clearly a euphemism for "baby shit."

*This is not surprising.

Doonesbury: Whoa--constarch!

This might not work as a method of picking up women, but it is nonetheless pretty cool.

Cul de Sac: MUSH

Cul de Sac more or less specializes in mortifying.

Sherman's Lagoon: Annoying, henpecking, overbearing woman to watch our child?

Shame shame shame shame shame shame shame.

Mark Trail: I'd like to have him!

The second panel of today's Mark Trail features a finely detailed rendering of the shapely and alluring grouse. And in the foreground of the third panel, we see what is perhaps the most mysterious and frightening creature of them all--naturalists call it a "woman."

Family Circus: He can't hear us anymore, Jeffy. He's dead.

On the other hand, this type of gleeful cruelty does seem somewhat uncalled for.

Drabble: I almost feel bad that I stopped to get my nails done!

This comic is hilarious because women are inconsiderate and superficial.

Crankshaft: We needed Lena to get a strike for us to win, and she threw the slowest ball I've ever seen!

This comic is hilarious because women are really, really, really weak.

Family Circus: Now, can we make him a snow LADY so he won't be lonely?

I think today's cartoon really puts Dolly's ceaseless drive for power in perspective. What we're seeing here is a young girl staring into the face of a deeply ingrained patriarchal hegemony, as symbolized here by her father, three brothers and male dog. They built the snowman without even giving consideration to building a snowlady, because of course all snowmen are male. It's not their fault, really. It's simply all they've ever known. Dolly's trying to change the world here. And who can really blame her?