Saturday, September 20, 2008

I...Don't Even Want to Know What's Going on Here

Today, we return to The Family Circus in order to witness little Billy's horrifying flirtation with cross-dressing. The sight of Billy in a pink dress, his chubby arms stuck straight out from his sides as if someone has perhaps gone a bit overboard with the starch, will be with me for a long, long time.

Luckily, this comic teaches a lovely medieval-style moral lesson. To wit: if you are a selfish little hellion who is incapable of letting his young sister blow out the candles on her own frickin' birthday cake, you deserve to be forced into pink frills and paraded before a jeering crowd as your mother and sister smirk in the background. Blow not out the candles on thy sister's cake, little Billy. They are morality candles. Beware. Beware. Beware.

However, an alternate interpretation might see Billy in the right here. Note that thought-bubble-Billy is in cruciform position. Could it be that those are actually the candles of sin? Billy, as Christ, has "blown them out" and been rewarded with ridicule and martyrdom. His father is conspicuously absent from this comic...except as the stark black signature at the top of the piece. Father! Why hast thou forsaken me? Poor exegetical Billy. He means well.


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