We’re only as strong as our weakest link.”

We’ve all heard this before. We’ve all been forced to work on the dreaded group project in classes where you are soundly confident that the rest of the “links” in your group could use a good strength program.

Lately, this statement has rung true for me on a more personal level. It happened when I opened up the paper one morning and was immediately disgusted by what I saw. Right there in black and white for all to see and be irritated by while they gulp down their coffee and toast. The Today section, the comic page … “The Family Circus.”

If you aren’t a habitual reader of the Des Moines Register, “The Family Circus” is a one-frame, circular cartoon drawn by Bill Keane that attempts to make witty observations on the life of a family with four children named Dolly, Billy, Jeffy and P.J.

Unfortunately for the readers of the funny page, his attempts fall drastically short. Not only is the cartoon not funny, it is so ridiculously unfunny it almost makes me mad, the exact opposite reaction that the comic page is meant to create.

Keane’s Sunday feature usually includes one of the three scenarios.

One of the kids follows a dotted line path all over town, house, yard, (fill in your favorite location here). He — it is most often Billy who takes these journeys — jumps over garbage cans, climbs up and down trees, goes in and out of a neighbor’s house or garage, down a handrail, etc.

All of this usually occurs while he is on his way to get the pliers for his dad, fixing the car or a household item for his mom.

Mr. Keane also is heavy into the presence of ghosts. He often draws a big open outdoor scene in his Sunday comic and has one of the kids say, “I bet we’re the first ones to ever fish here!” or “I bet Grandpa wishes he was fishing with us!”

And wouldn’t you know it! There in the background he’s drawn either a thousand pictures of “ghost children” who have fished in that same spot or their grandpa looking down on the family fondly. Touching? Moving? Not quite.

And let’s not forget those hilarious instances when the author turns his pen over to 7-year old Billy to draw the cartoon for the day. You can give me that whole theory that audiences should just blindly believe what an author tells you, but I just don’t buy it.

Bill Keane has been writing this cartoon for many, many years. Even if he did have his son write the cartoon for him now and again in years past — we all know he can’t be seven forever.

Even if he really did draw it, then he’s been doing it for years! You would think his handwriting would improve beyond the chicken scratches that appear in Crayola strokes across the page.

While it’s great to carry over ideas and themes from week to week in a cartoon, the repetition here is way overdone.

I can’t help falling back on a piece of advice I learned in elementary school while reading Beverly Cleary’s Ramona Quimby books: first time funny, second time silly, third time a spanking. It’s time for Bill to break into something new and different (and funny) for a change.

The whole page of funnies is suffering because of one weak link. Other cartoons seem to be catching the unfunny disease. “Garfield,” a standard favorite of mine, has taken a serious turn downhill.

Jim Davis even stooped to drawing Garfield as “sock head,” which closely parallels the sock head character that the youngest daughter in the “For Better, For Worse” comic portrayed. The sock head theme drug on for at least two weeks in “For Better, For Worse” and was a tired idea after one day. To have “Garfield” come back with the same idea a couple weeks later was a major disappointment.

I suppose it’s tough to set comical standards for the funny pages, but something has to happen or people are going to stop reading them. Lots of readers have already lost interest and quit reading religiously after “The Far Side” and “Calvin and Hobbes” both jumped ship. Unless standards are raised, the belly laughs once earned by the comics may dwindle to a mere polite chuckle. If it weren’t for “Baby Blues” and “Dilbert,” I would stop reading the page myself.

Why is the quality of the comic page so important? Because people need it. We need a place to go where we can expect to laugh and be entertained.

The rest of the newspaper is filled with column inches written about death and disaster, war and welfare issues, sex offenders and shopping ads. We need a section of the newspaper to escape from all of that.

We need to strengthen that weak link so we can giggle over the Today section at breakfast or our lunch break and momentarily forget the cruel jokes dealt to the world that hits the press only a few pages away.

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Joanne Roepke is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Aurora.