Luann: Ah. And judging from the grass on your back, I'd say the patient is feeling better.

This comic is hilarious because Toni and Brad have been fucking in the grass, and they want Brad's lecherous friend TJ to know all about it.

Family Circus: We're takin' Barfy to the V...E...T.

This cartoon is hilarious because the Keanes are taking Barfy to the vet.

Get Fuzzy: That's heresay. Not admissible.

I know I say this a lot, but it really is the little things that make Get Fuzzy so good. It tickles me to no end that that Bucky thinks of "hearsay" as "heresay," suggesting that even his more cogent thoughts are peppered with nonsense.

Lola: It's nice knowing anyone I might have to save weighs less than my sandwich.

This comic is hilarious because Lola has a big sandwich.

Kathy. Ack: What actually goes on behind my face when I'm being fucked?

Cathy is not a very funny comic strip. The writing of Kathy Acker could, in contrast, be quite funny. But if you put the two of them together, as this brilliant person here does, the result is far funnier than either of them ever were on their own.

Luann: It's not the crepes I wanted.

This comic is hilarious because it's his penis she wanted.

Hi and Lois, Betty and Daddy's Home: I'm a kid of Camp Runamucca...

In case you haven't been paying attention, every child in the comics section has been sent off to summer camp, where they are participating in such traditional tropes as:

• Going to a camp with a ridiculous name.
• Having enormous counselors make them do stuff they don't want to do.
• Singing stupid songs.
• Not understanding old-fashioned games because their minds have been poisoned by teh modern technology.

Baby Blues: The tolerance of pain is in direct proportion to the proximity of the mom.

I like this comic better than when it was a Family Circus cartoon. Part of it is that Baby Blues has moderately better characters. A bigger part of it is that Baby Blues has more space to work with, which allows it to set up the joke in a clearer way. And most of it is that Jeffy's line feels false, whereas Hammie's reactions seem more true to life.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith: Ladies, gitta oad of Mister Dreamy, th' new choir director!!

This comic is hilarious because the women of Hootin' Holler are apparently attracted to men who have a butt where their chin should be.* Whether Mister Dreamy has a chin where his butt should be is left to our imagination.

*I am not surprised by this.

Family Circus: The only time a 'gator craves fast food is when he sees a cheetah.

The Tao of Billy Keane is the taoiest tao of them all.

Ziggy: ...You weren't kidding. It DID freeze!

This cartoon is hilarious because Ziggy has been downloading pornography with viruses so destructive that they have actually managed to encase his computer (though evidently only his monitor) in a block of ice.

Family Circus: Mommy, what does #@X*&! spell?

This cartoon is hilarious because the artwork in the comics section of the Keanes' local newspaper tends toward the abstract.

Prickly City: By dreaming big we just might overcome how small we can be.

War, poverty and injustice: 0. Trite platitudes: 1.

Next time in Prickly City: Carmen provides fifty million Americans with quality, affordable (and private!) health insurance by climbing Mt. Everest. How? Because if she can scale a mountain that tall, she can do anything!

Herman: I know it's a dog license! He was driving.

Of course, I could be wrong about that whole "Billy's a genius" thing.

In which case, this is his likely future.

Family Circus: Barfy and Sam are lucky. Bo Obama can't go anywhere without a secret service dog.

At first glance, it might seem like Billy's being stupid here. But I remain convinced that he's actually a borderline genius. So I think it's safe to say that Billy's just fucking with Jeffy's head.

Moderately Confused: I used to yearn to be hip...Now I yearn for a new hip.

Moderately Confused is the only cartoon in the comics section that can even come close to competing with Pluggers' otherworldly levels of oldfuddyduddydom.

Lola: No bubbles like that in the pool on my watch, mister.

This comic is hilarious because it's about farting.

Pluggers: A plugger earns his ice cream the old-fashioned way...he churns it.

Except, of course, when he doesn't.

Marmaduke: Marm! Stop begging!

This comic is hilarious because Marmaduke doesn't have a penis.

Garfield: We're bachelors, baby.

This Garfield does a good job illustrating why Garfield Minus Garfield works so well. Garfield's presence adds nothing to this comic and, in almost every way, makes it worse.

Family Circus: Grandma's clock is always tick-talking.

This cartoon is hilarious because, considering the voices that she apparently hears, Dolly is almost certainly schizophrenic. It would explain so much.

Big Nate: Rrowr!

This comic is hilarious because Nate is sexually harassing girls at the library.

Arlo and Janis: I don't know. I thought my life would change somehow.

This comic is hilarious because technology makes for a lousy religion.

Pluggers: Plugger moms lead well-balanced lives.

The life of the male plugger is pretty good. You get to eat copious amounts of unhealthy food until you're so obese that you don't fit into any of your old clothes. You get to drug yourself up. You get to play all sorts of fun games. And you get to ride around in your old, beat up trucks and tractors from dusk til dawn.

The life of the female plugger, meanwhile, is just a little worse. You are responsible for the care of your husband's brood of children. You have to exercise yourself ragged so you can still fulfill your husband's sexual cravings. You have to fix all the food for your family with substandard kitchen appliances. And, in general, you have to live on a meager budget because you are forbidden from working outside the home, while your husband works at a non-unionized (because unions are evil) blue-collar job in a dying industry but votes for politicians who support policies that increase the nation's economic inequality (because that's just the common sense thing to do).

Shoe: Except balancing the budget and paying off the national debt.

This comic is hilarious because Shoe doesn't understand basic countercyclical economic policy.

Family Circus: These are some of my dad's drawings. We call it "POP art".

Billy seems to be fully aware that he is making a pun. As such, it stands to reason that he knows what pop art is. This is rather impressive for a seven-year-old and yet further proof that he is by far the smartest Keane.

In fact, I can only assume that Billy, though pretending to be friends with the token black kid, is instead simply trying to lure him into his cult as the first non-Keane-child member. Puns are probably not the best way to do this, of course, but Billy's still learning. Soon he'll break out one of those aphorisms, and token black kid will be putty in Billy's pudgy little hands.

Prickly City: It's been 40 years. Isn't it time to go back and leave some more?!?

This comic is hilarious because, while it is un-American and irresponsible to want to spend billions of dollars so that everyone in the country can have health insurance, it is fantastically patriotic to want to spend billions of dollars to send a few people to visit a hunk of rock hanging in space.

Drabble: Have I mentioned lately how much i hate cats.

Next time in Drabble: Ralph gets his eyes clawed out by the cat. Everybody's glad.

Doonesbury: Oh...no...hurt you?

This comic is hilarious because Toggle's going to accidentally kill Alex in her sleep.

Rose is Rose: You're in for a true culinary experience, Mr. Drain Monster!

As far as Rose is Rose goes, this particular cartoon isn't too terrible. But that's pretty faint praise, considering Rose is Rose is the most cloying, obnoxiously colorful, revoltingly adorable comic strip in existence. It makes The Family Circus look gritty.

So, really, I would have liked this comic better if the monster had broken loose from the drain and eaten the entire family. Preferably in as shockingly gruesome detail as possible.

Luann: There are children with no roof over thier heads, no food, no water, no one to take care fo them.

The worst thing of all, of course, is reading all the way through this comic strip.

Betty: Sigh.

This comic is also hilarious because children like to watch television.

Family Circus and Red and Rover: How's your book?

As a general rule, Sunday editions of The Family Circus tend to be more tolerable than the daily cartoons. This probably has a lot to do with one of the things I wrote about here: the extra space allows (or forces) Keane Inc. to occasionally craft an actual story instead of just relying on their usual crutch of the adorable malapropism.

And further proof that Red and Rover relies on the same type of humor as The Family Circus:

Both of these comics are hilarious, by the way, because children like to watch television.