'Family Circus' Creator Bil Keane Dies of Congestive Heart Failure

Bil Keane, the creator of the long-running comic strip "The Family Circus," has died at the age of 89.

Bil Keane died at his home in Paradise Valley, AZ, of congestive heart failure.

Bil Keane began the comic strip "The Family Circus" in 1960. It was originally titled "The Family Circle," because of its use of a single captioned panel with a round border. However, the strip was soon renamed after objections from Family Circle magazine.

His son, Jeff Keane, took over strip duties in recent years. The strip appears in about 1,500 newspapers across the United States.

Jeff Keane, speaking of the last conversation he had with his father Bil, said "He said, 'I love you' and that's what I said to him, which is a great way to go out. The great thing is Dad loved the family so much, so the fact that we all saw him, I think that gave him great comfort and made his passing easy. Luckily he didn't suffer through a lot of things."

The strip debuted on February 29, 1960 featuring Daddy, Mommy, Dolly, Billy, and Jeffy. A fourth child, P.J., was added in 1962. In addition, the strip features the family pets. There are two dogs, a Labrador named Barfy and a mutt named Sam, who is a stray the children brought home in the strip on January 26, 1970. They also have an orange tabby cat named Kittycat.

Daddy and Mommy are named Bil and Thel (Bil was originally called Steve in early strips) and are modeled after Bil Keane and his wife, Thelma Carne Keane. Their four children, Billy, Dolly, Jeffy, and P.J., are fictionalized amalgams of the Keanes' five real-life children. With the exception of P.J., who began as an infant and has since aged to around 18 months, the characters have not aged appreciably during the strip's run.

Thelma Keane died of Alzheimer's disease in 2008.

The comic took a look at family life, and issued strips with gentle humor. In his biography on the King Features Syndicate website, Keane said, "I would rather have the readers react with a warm smile, a tug at the heart of a lump in the throat as they recall doing the same things in their own family."

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

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