Aunt Tenna
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Aunt Tenna was never a comic strip in its own right, but was an irregular subfeature of Channel Chuckles, a daily and Sunday feature by The Family Circus cartoonist Bil Keane. In its daily form, Channel Chuckles consisted of a single panel gag on the general theme of television, or specifically relating to a particular television series or TV commercial. The Sunday version of Channel Chuckles was merely several unlinked spot gags in color, all on a television theme.
One "Channel Chuckles" gag depicted the fictional character Mr. Spock from Star Trek receiving letters requesting advice on child-rearing (a reference to Doctor Benjamin Spock). Another "Channel Chuckles" gag depicted a mad scientist working in his laboratory while a nearby television intoned the slogan of a current DuPont ad campaign: "Better living through chemistry".
Most of the "Channel Chuckles" gags were simple wordplay references to the titles of contemporary television programs. Probably the wittiest "Channel Chuckles" gag was the one depicting a small TV set on top of a larger TV set, each of them displaying on its screen the title of a current TV sitcom. While the upper TV set showed "Love on a Rooftop", the one underneath blared "Hey, Landlord!".
Just occasionally, Keane would subdivide the narrow space allotted to his "Channel Chuckles" feature in order to squeeze in two panels rather than the usual one. "Channel Chuckles" once featured a two-panel gag based on the titles of two current TV series. In the first panel, a man asks his wife "Why can't you be more like that show?" while pointing to a TV set as it displays the title "Occasional Wife". In the second panel, the wife points to the same TV while asking her husband "And why can't you be more like THAT show?". This time the title on the TV screen is "The Man Who Never Was".
At irregular intervals, some of the panel and Sunday gags featured "Aunt Tenna", a matronly woman with her hair done in the form of a TV antenna. The only other recurring character in "Channel Chuckles" was "Dim Viewer", a grumpy old man who always had something negative to say about whatever program was on television.
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