Check Out: Bil Keane’s Channel Chuckles (1954-1976)

Ger Apeldoorn has posted a considerable collection of Bil Keane’s other feature Channel Chuckles that ran from 1954 through 1976 (Family Circus launched in 1960).

Here’s Ger explaining Channel Chuckles:

Like Family Circle it was a daily cartoon series with a larger selection of gags on the Sunday. Keane kept this going for almost 20 years, most of which he did it alongside Family Circle, which started only a couple of years after it. I have updated the concept for a cartoon sries of my own with cartoonist Willem Ritstier for a couple of years. We did one cartoon every two weeks until recently and it made me appreciate the difficulty of doing not one but two series a week, needing a minumum of 12 gagas each every week. Family Circle may have been a bit saccharine, but Chanel Chuckles had a bit more bite. The satirical nature of the basic premiss, a cartoon series about television and all that it brings along, allowed for a bit more sarcasm.

Visit his site to enjoy the strips.

Via Tom Spurgeon

One thought on “Check Out: Bil Keane’s Channel Chuckles (1954-1976)

  1. Never really keen (no pun intended) on The Family Circus. Channel Chuckles, on the other, could be biting. I only wondered what would have happened if Channel Chuckles had covered sitcoms such as Seinfeld/Friends, soaps such as Dynasty, the explosion of cable/satellite TV channels or the recent wave of reality TV shows–not to mention such applications as video games, Youtube(R), karaoke and DVDs.

Comments are closed.

Top