This is one of my all-time favorite Family Circus cartoons.
It’s also the image they use on TFC Wikipedia page, which is weird, because I don’t think the author of that page could have chosen a less representative example of the strip as a whole.
It is, however, a great example of how good TFC used to be. First of all, look at how adorable the kids are!
Second of all, the joke is about boozing. Secret boozing. Around kids! And then driving them home! It’s funny and cute in the same way that it’s funny and cute when an already flush-faced Don Draper gets lil Sally to fix him another Old Fashioned.
Thirdly, and most importantly, this is NOT the same Daddy you see in later cartoons. I’m not sure when the change was made (I haven’t reached that level of FC expertise yet) but the newer father has a full head of yellow hair and glasses with no visible eyes. I know, sometimes illustrated characters slowly morph over time (see: Arthur the Aardvark’s slowly disappearing nose or the Simpson's wobbly lines), but these are two different dudes. The Daddy in this early cartoon is named Steve, and the blond, bespectacled daddy is named Bil. Steve has a grouchy, downtrodden countenance, while Bil has a constant expression of dull surprise. Steve is a gritty guys’ guy, a WWII vet, a true man of the 50s, grimly and drunkenly ushering his family into a turbulent new decade. Bil is gentle, sensitive, sentimental, and a little clueless-- and more fitting for an increasingly progressive wife, audience, and world. Did Thel (aka Mommy) kick Steve to the curb for a more modern man?
I’ll trust that Thel made the decision that was right for her, but when Steve disappeared, he took along the strip’s mild -- but genuinely funny --irreverence.
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