When you start reading Tom Bancroft’s Outnumbered, you may feel the need to pass judgment on it ten strips from the beginning. It’s shamelessly family friendly and cheery with a very cutesy style of humor, and I’m assuming that’s going to be an instant turn off for a good chunk of potential viewers. I’d advise newer readers to keep going into it just a little bit longer, because it’s far more intelligent and self aware than most of the mild mannered sitcoms on television.
Mark is the sole member of his household with a Y chromosome, and like most TV dads he feels the need to assert his manhood from time to time. The difference is that he’s not written like the vast majority of dopey manchild fathers. He actually comes off smart as well as a decent husband and parent, so it’s a lot easier to forgive him for his occasional desire to indulge himself. I’m guessing he’s Bancroft’s representative in some senses, but given Mark’s likability that was probably for the best. His homemaker wife Melody is allowed to have the occasional petty moment- not to a Peggy Hill degree, but they happen. His four children don’t give him any sort of relief either- not his oldest daughter Megan with laughably bad taste in boyfriends, nor his diva in training middle child Ashley, and certainly not Casey and Callie, the twins and the youngest. The arrival of new neighbor Travis gives Mark someone to identify with at long last, and he courts him like a shy but now lovestruck teenage girl. Yep, ironically this is where most of the (b?)romantic tension lies
The family here, despite their unfortunate and bizarre lack of a surname, I think is more or less what the Bundys from Married With Children would be like if they weren’t doomed losers. Even though it’s a fairly new strip, so far everyone’s taken turns playing the butt of the joke, and as of now no one’s gone through any “flanderization” or emerged as the character that causes all the problems. The art is top notch- fluid, cute and expressive, which should come as no surprise given Bancroft’s many years of experience as a Disney animator and children’s book illustrator.
Outnumbered is a strip that I can honestly say I enjoyed, but I can understand why someone else wouldn’t. Its innocence and lightness is obviously going to be an acquired taste with a number of people, but I’d still recommend it (and you can find it here), if only because if the comic increases in popularity, Bancroft plans to add a dog to the family. I don’t even care if it winds up not talking or not having any superpowers, a dog is never not worth it.