This isn't to say that the Family Circus is a complete desert. As to the art, I've become intimately familiar with it by being first a contributor and then an editor for Greg Galcik's magnificent Dysfunctional Family Circus . It just invites retitling, and I don't think the Dysfunctional treatment would work anywhere as well for other lame comics. But Keane's situations are simple, yet varied enough that DFCers can comment on almost anything. This time, they're wrong.
People think they hate Mutts because it's pointless or cutesy.
The problem is actually just that Mutts is about fifty years out of its time. You might start by looking at the drawing. Mutts, with its Ben Day screens and potato heads, doesn't look like anything else on the comics page. It might have fit in fifty years ago, right next to Krazy Kat . Mooch the cat, and their interactions with the local humans and wildlife.