9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
Request: merely minimalist dada, or subversive malapropism?, July 15, 2002
Reviewer: Bil Keane (see more about me) from Austin, TX
Eagerly awaiting the newest installment to the Family Circus lineage, I found myself gingerly ticking off the days until another another fine volume could be birthed into the hearts and minds of us, it's most faithful readers.
Of course, I am aware of Keane's hardened past, referred to in certain circles as his 'pre-republic' days. I would be more diluted than a dry distended colon in a sand-blasted wind storm not to see the leftist leanings and semiotic propaganda that dots each of the carefully inked vignettes.
Yet, I can see the kinder, softer accents of mirth that Keane embellishes upon the face of his characters. I see them as adventurers, wandering out into the desert of impiety, ever shouldering the cause of humanity. Expressing more glee than a mall santa after a quick trip through all of the fruedian erotogenic zones, I finger through the pages intrepidly, musing with a meek delight.
To me, above any of the chatter and ruinious gossip regarding Keane's purported role in the Milan bombings of '47 (or the subsequent defacement of cubist era paintings in '52), I know deep in my heart that when Keane shows us the silly side of Jeffy, he is showing us true childlike innocence, ala Bil Keane.
Bravo!
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Calvinistic despair, epicurean ecstasy, July 20, 2002
Reviewer: A reader from New Mexico
Keane's myth shattering pop art goes far beyond Warhol's bland acceptance of consumerism to become a symbol of calvinistic despair in the midst of a seemingly anaesthesized middle class family that revolves around the eternally sin-denying "Jeffy" (i.e. "not me") and the practically coiffed mother who wanders through these single panels in a state of zombie trancelike indifference. Counter-intuitively, it is the elderly grandmother who systematically rips off the cover of all of this depressing rationality by regularly escaping into daydream/mystical transcendent fantasies of her deceased husband playing harp with angels in a cloudlike paradise. The montage of themes would cancel each other out if it weren't for the inner strength provided by the ever chipper family dog who gallically enjoys what he can in his food and companions with little concern for the goings ons about him. Dyspeptics, nail biters, triplets, Calvinists, post-moderns, right wing homosexuals, Epicureans, illuminati, shiites, will all find much that will appeal to them in this latest volume of illustrated art by Bill Keane!
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
Family Circus Adventures in Cannibalism, July 25, 2002
Reviewer: Willkeane from Keanesville, Ohio
A tense drama set in the Congo, deep in darkest Africa, where the family has been posted as missionaries. One day, Billy wanders off the beaten path, and even the heavenly intervention of Grandpa can't save young master William from the Cannibal's pot. Such sorrow overtakes the family that they all set off deep into the jungle for to save the souls of the godless Billy-eat'n heathens. Daddy is set to beat the word of God into these kafirs when the remaining family circle all wind up in the cannibal's pot. And just as the title promises, "the Family Circus by Request" appear on the Cannibal's restaurant menu! Mmm mm, good eatin!
I won't give away the surprise ending, but lets just say that the book concludes with a thrilling all you can eat "mystery buffet" where blindfolded cannibal connoisseurs must guess if they are injesting good old fashioned family circus peanuts, or the proverbial "tastes like" chicken.
As a special Amazon online bonus, this edition comes with a special Family Circus cookbook, with all the recipies appearing in this classic book.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Keane Political Kommentary, July 24, 2002
Reviewer: Don Pardo from Boring, Oregon
This collection was produced while Bill Keane was an office boy at Enron and WorldCom, and establishes Keane's inside knowledge of the factors leading up to the coming Enron and WorldCom stock scandals.
The complex graphical and cartographic representations of "Not Me's" links to President Bush's Whitehouse establish what a host of investigative journalists have failed to prove: that a dotted trail runs from George W. Bush's kitchen to the Enron Bank Vaults. Further, Keane's knowledge of recombinant DNA-splicing techniques prove a biological basis for claims that George W. Bush and "Not Me" were both created in the CIA's labs while George Bush Senior was DCI in the 1970s.