Scott Meets Family Circus

It's days like today that I really miss Scott Meets Family Circus.  Nothing especially rough or meaningful has happened to me today, but I get these pangs every so often.  In times of plenty or in times of want, there's always something satisfying about seeing a bland, undeserving American icon get shat upon.  Not broken down and analyzed, or even sliced apart, as with a rapier--that would be boring and useless--but mercilessly beaten, as with a sledgehammer, for little reason other than because it's so easy. 

From September 2008 to August 2011, Scott irregularly but hilariously harassed The Family Circus family.  It didn't matter that they could never fight back.  If anything, it probably helped--their passivity was a natural partner for their banal exploits and inoffensive observations.  Scott was an anarchic force so alien and unknowable to the family--and yet inevitable--that his presence was that of an emotional and psychological tornado.  He may not directly hit every character on a given pass, but he'll have touched someone or something they cared about.  And he'd be coming back.  He was a dose of hyper-reality, crashing into an ever-unchanging universe, exposing The Family Circus' personal hell of being incapable of expressing real thoughts about real situations.  Aside from the ill-advised and brief existence of Dante, a side story that showed hints of promise but was never right for the format, Scott was a freight train running full bore into the complacent family, forcing them to confront the real world and their reactions to it in whatever feeble way they could manage.  In that way, Scott was the invaluable dramatic element that the family never knew they needed, and could never be done without again.  Even if they might've preferred to. 

I know nothing about Scott Gairdner, that creepy-looking weirdo with the penchant for intimidating and belittling cartoon pre-kindergartners before banging their mother.  I don't know what his circumstances are or why he hasn't posted anything in almost nine months.  It seems probable that the death of creator Bil Keane in November lightened Scott's heart and he decided to quit, or at least go on hiatus (even though the strip continues with Keane's son at the helm).  I hope it's not a lack of inspiration or decline of interest on his part, though these things do happen.  But wherever you are, here's to you, Scott, you magnificent bastard.