Performance art at its finest: Dolly wails and beats a tom-tom, while the boys try to catch popcorn thrown at them from the audience.Ken
"Mommy! Billy's got into your fedameems again!"Schol-R-LEA
From Keane's Symbolism Files: Dolly already has her spotlight of fame, but wails in the knowledge of its worthlessness. Billy continues to chase...and miss opportunites. Jeffy has caught his limelight, and is expecting more to merely come to him. Lastly, PJ simply has a long way to reach.Twomp
Yet another training session at Professor K's School for Gifted Melonheads.Schol-R-LEA
"OOWW! I got fawwout in my eye! This game isn't fun any more!"Schol-R-LEA
"ALL I WANT IS A FIREFLY WITH MAYONAISE!!! IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?!"K-Man
"Damn it Billy, I need all of them to lift the curse! Do you want to be stuck in this shape forever?Schol-R-LEA
Shown here, a young Pandora opens the forbidden box, allowing Hate, Envy, and Prejudice to escape into the world, along with the Keane children.Bill
Mom, couldn't you think of a better place to hide an Easter egg than my hair?Judgement Night
Even in the alternate DC universes, the Flash was still an inconsiderate prick.Tonton Macoute
Edvard Munch's The Hissy FitGaijin Marty
Case # X-348987, Fox Mulder reporting. I witnessed first hand a family of freakish, melonheaded children amid a swarm of disembodied souls, trapped forever in a spacial plane between the afterlife and the world they left. The freaks seem to be connected in some way to the deaths of these people, but I can't tell yet whether the souls are tormenting their killers or vice versa.Ratman
"Billy was the only one who heeded Mommy's advice to 'go toward the light.' I still miss him." Dolly Keane-Humbert, MemoirsGen. Sedgwick
In the Keane cosmology, the 5-body problem is conveniently solved by the introduction of the Hellman's Jar, which attracts not only large extrasolar masses but flies, too.Stan Xhiao
Yet Woodstock 2000 proved to be the most horrific yet...Bill
"Mommeeee! Billy's hogging all the souls."chimp
"...the surprising thing was that buckshot actually does have an effect on angels--Granddad popped like a party favor. Though the entire escapade would haunt Dolly for years to come, the boys recovered quickly, scampering to catch the bits of the old ghost before they hit the ground." --Bil Keane, Guilty PleasuresTom. Just Tom.
"Billy's stealing my Chi again!"Tom. Just Tom.
The Four Horsemelons of the Apocalypse: Warped, Hammin', Pistinpants, and JeffKen
This panel marked the beginning of Keane's Fugitive period. For the next six years readers followed Dolly's search for the one armed man and the stolen fireflies. After year four, even Johnny Hart was overheard to say, "What the fuck?!?" -A Brief History of the Funny PagesSean Q
"Yeah", Billy chuckled, "Dolly's fireflies suffocated, 'cause she hadn't poked holes in the lid. She seemed pretty upset, so I told her that they weren't really fireflies, they were angels waiting to get into Heaven. She was hysterical after that. Funny. She had to take her Prozac every day after that one. From "Billy the Kid, the William Keane Jr. Story."Stupid Picnic
Billy was too fidgety to be a good back-up dancer, ruining Dolly's soulful rendition of "When a Man Loves a Woman" time and again.Tom Geller
"CURSE YOU, SIREN FIREFLIES! CURSE YOUR SPELLBINDING HOLD ON OUR MENFOLK!"deX!
Billy deftly snagged the ally-oop from Jeffy and rammed the bug into his sister's gaping mouth, earning two points and a critical Game 4 win. - scene from Bugball: A RetrospectivedeX!
Dear Theo: Things are going swell in Arizona. Have been painting up a storm (see above). Met this charming family, the husband has been giving me 'illustratin' lessons and I feel my work is better than ever (although these people could drive you a little crazy). Yours, Vincent.sx
Early concept art from Disney's relentlessly upbeat adaptation of "The Bell Jar."Vinegar Tom
Kartoon Korner tip of the week: What differentiates a boldly incisive sophisticated New Yorker cartoon from an uptight, conservative, boring newspaper cartoon? Charcoal, charcoal, charcoal!Vinegar Tom
I wanna move back to our old house, I don't like Chernobyl!megafrim
The lens filter did a pretty fair job of creating the illusion of night, but Bil's attempt at simulating fireflies with burning magnesium went tragically wrong.Gaijin Marty
You promised the glass was bulletproof!Space Mutant
Looks like somebody left the door open on the Nipple Server again.Yakko
"Billy! No!" I tried to scream out a warning, but it was too late. He was determined to escape, so he ran headlong towards the border of the circle. We thought for a moment he might have made it, but last I heard, he fell clear through Apartment 3G, Gasoline Alley, and BC. Unfortunately, he landed in Sunny's bedroom in Jump Start, where her dad found him and beat him within an inch of his life. Poor kid. Thank God he landed where he did. I heard that Grog was in heat." - Dolly Keane-Grimm: The Circus Still Haunts Me.Flan!
My favorite panel? All four children being raked by gunfire. -- Anne Rice, Interview with the Cowles EditorHelder (self-salvaging)
"In this panel, we see how Keane ripped off his art style from Jack Kirby. Because , see, Billy's running. With his hand outstretched. And it looks like...a Kirby pose...FUCK ALL OF YOU, ANYWAY! You think it's easy looking at every maniacal scribble that son of a bitch has ever put to paper?! I wish I was dead! I WISH I WAS DEAD!" -- from Bil Keane: The Art, The Life, The Utter BastardPete
And the best part was telling the kids the isotope-contaminated hailstones were 'angels with magic wishes' while Bil and I went downstairs into our lead-lined love nest and bolted the entrance. --More Guilty Pleasures, Thel KeaneOrrin Bloquy
The sixth ring of Firefly Hell.Helder
"No, you idiot, that's still not my G-spot."Helder
After the 64th firefly and 19th jar of semen, Dolly knew that Billy's strange but somewhat convincing concoction for getting rid of her cold was nothing but a cruel, cruel joke.The Dank
We just thought it was lightnin' bugs, till Dolly took one in the ass and Billy took one in the hand. By the time Sarge realized Beetle was shooting outside his own strip, Marmaduke lay dead, Pig Pen and Linus were in the Mt. Sinai trauma unit, and Gasoline Alley was blown to smithereens. Thankfully, Cathy was dead too. "The Day Beetle Bailey Snapped" by Jeffy KeaneLt. Dan
The unfertilized eggs Dolly sold for medical experiments would come back to haunt her.El Caballero
"Dammit Marcie, you missed every single one of those fuckers." "I'm sorry Sir, but the cute little number in the mini-skirt appears to have fogged up my glasses."Helder
December 16, 1957: Billy shatters the foundation of Dolly's philosophical beliefs by demonstrating the sound of one hand clapping.Torc.
While the other kids caught fireflies (or just whined about it), Billy enjoyed his favorite pastime ... cow-tipping.Stan Xhiao
Hunters and blatherers.Heath
Firefly Island isn't any fun, either!Roy
Dolly finally realizes that she'll never be a Pokemelon master, when her Peej is easily defeated by Jeffy's Billikin.Not the Messiah
Sadly, dolly discovered that "Ball Lightning" wasn't an adult video.ChAoS
A janitor in a train station finds the dead body of a drunken, abusive cartoonist slumped against a wall. An empty Pez dispenser falls from his limp hand, but the janitor just throws it into the nearby grass and goes to get the police. Out on the grass amidst the fireflies, the spectral images of hydrocephalic children arise - opening scene of Isao Takahata's anime classic, Grave of the MelonheadsSchol-R-LEA
Tiny jumpgates formed all over the yard. Dolly feared the coming of the Shadows, but Billy knew they had made a tragic scale miscalculation. Babylon 5, "Into the Circle"Dvandom
Billy yanked the rubber band from Dolly's hair in a boyish prank, but was completely unprepared when her head hissed and sailed helplessly around the backyard.Vinegar Tom
"But I didn't do pass interference!"awkwardone
Why can't Daddy just pay the fuckin' electric bill?megafrim
Dolly's latent supernatural powers manifest themselves by producing a swarm of disembodied nipples.Vinegar Tom
Billy's freaking me out! He's leaving a contrail instead of a dotted line!Megafrim
Aaaah! Something's glowing with an pure, inner light. Crush it, Billy! Crush it!Bill
Back to the DFC Archive index