For over fifty years, 'The Family Circus' has been a mainstay in American newspapers. You know, the dead trees with ink on them your parents and grandparents use as a hard copy of the Internet. A snapshot from a time when families were nuclear and conservative and religious and blissfully free of difficulties – re: never – the comic is still limping along but feels more like a time capsule than a comic strip.
Enter 'True Detective' and all its existential ramblings about if life even has meaning via 'Time Is A Flat Circus'. Pairing that melancholy outlook with Billy, Dolly, Jeffy, and PJ injects the strip with an over-the-top 21st century humor, which probably means were all terrible cynical jerks but c'est la vie.
#1 – Dolly questions whether her mother is selfish for bringing them into the world. With six billion people is is unsound to have four children?
#2 – Jeffy ponders the futility of suburbia, the middle class fleeing from the city only to turn around and gentrify it a generation later, abandoning the sprawl the lower class.
#3 – Jeffy embodies the post-millennial generation, children who are growing up with unparalleled access to the world at an early age and all the jaded entropy that breeds.
#4 – Billy points out the struggle of religion to adapt their message to a society where science and literacy are general knowledge.
Whoever is running 'Time Is A Flat Circus' has a real knack for finding the perfect comic strip to showcase their quotes. While the blog is new, it's updating regularly. Be sure to check out the entire collection!