Bil Keane, the creator of Family Circus, the world's most widely syndicated cartoon, was once told by a teacher: "William Keane, you better stop wasting your time with these cartoons. You'll never be able to make a living drawing funny pictures."

But, as Keane said, "I never did stop. . . . I liked to make people laugh."

At age 70, he's still making people laugh with the Family Circus, which appears in more than 1,400 newspapers.

Keane started the comic in 1960 as the Family Circle. He based the characters on his children, Gayle, Neal, Glen, Chris and Jeff. Today, his children are all reaching midlife, and he relies more on his grandchildren for inspiration.

"They (his grandchildren) think Granddad's following them around lovingly," said Keane. "And I'm just saying - yeah, do something funny for Grandad."

The children who inspire Keane today are from a different generation, yet the children in the cartoon remain 7, 5, 3 and 1 1/2 years old.

"I always feel I've frozen their ages at the ideal age for me," said Keane. "To make the situations work, and the humor of the feature comes through . . . the innocence of childhood.

"Billy would now be - he'd be 39 years old. And what's funny about a 39-year-old kid wandering around the house?"

Slow journey to success

Even though his cartoons are a great success today, Keane did not achieve fame quickly. His road to success is a story not unlike that of many other artists, job by job, each one a little better.

Keane's first job was doing cartoons for Yank magazine and as a staff artist of Stars and Stripes, the Army newspaper. He entered the Army in World War II, right after graduating from high school.

"I drew cartoons about the Army," he said, including one called At Ease with the Japanese while he was based in Tokyo.

After the war, Keane came back to the United States, married Thel, a woman he met in Australia; found a job, and he and Thel became the parents of five "baby boomers."

This job, at the now-defunct Philadelphia Bulletin, while not exactly the pinnacle of his career, did serve as a milestone on the road to his success.

Keane then shifted his career into second gear by starting a comic strip called Silly Philly, which was based on the founder of Philadelphia, William Penn. Later, he started a feature called Channel Chuckles, which he describes as "a daily cartoon that ridiculed television."

At the same time, Keane kept producing other cartoons to submit to magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and Look.

Keane's other cartoons earned him enough money to quit the Bulletin and move to Arizona.

It was in their new home that Keane soon realized "that most of the cartoons I sold to magazines were about the kids. So I thought, well, I can do a feature, and just have it about kids and about a family."

Keane drew some samples, put them in a circle "so it would look a little bit different," and called it the Family Circle.

From `Circle' to `Circus'

The cartoon did not stay the Family Circle for very long because Family Circle magazine threatened to sue Keane over the title.

"I just changed the `l-e' (in Circle) to `u-s' and made it the Family Circus, which is more indicative of what goes on in the cartoon anyway," said Keane.

Thirty-three years later, he still draws six daily panels and one Sunday panel each week. He also spends time putting together Family Circus books, which have sold 14 million copies.

So, when he opens a newspaper and sees his work, how does he feel?

"It makes me feel that the editor has very good taste," he said.