Knowing that Bil Keane's son Jeff (aka Jeffy) has been drawing Family Circus for the last few years really makes the "Billy Keane, age 7, is filling in" variety of strips even more nonsensical.*

If Billy is the oldest of the Keane kids, how is he younger than Jeffy?

Also, has anyone else noticed the Jeffy character has become stupider in recent years. My theory is that Jeff Keane comes up with a joke where one of the kids does something stupid, but then realizes that if he makes Billy, Dolly, or PJ the butt of the joke, he's going to get angry phone calls from his brothers and sister, or worse calls from his mom relaying angry phone calls from his brothers and sister. So Jeff bites the bullet and makes his cartoon alter ego take the hit every time.

* I'd like to note that grammatically it would be better to say these kind of strips are "less sensical," but "sensical" is not a word. This raises the question of how something can be "nonsensical" if there is no such thing as "sensical."