Dysfunctional Family Circus
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The Dysfunctional Family Circus is the name of several long-running parodies of the syndicated comic strip The Family Circus, featuring either Bil Keane's artwork with altered captions, or (less often) original artwork made to appear like the targeted strips. First distributed by mail and fax, by 1992 various versions of it began to appear on the World Wide Web.
The best known (or perhaps most notorious) version was that run by Greg Galcik on his Web page Spinnwebe from 1994 to 1999. This version featured original Keane art without captions, and ran submission software to allow viewers to suggest their own captions. From these Galcik and other editors would select those they considered to be the funniest and most original, which would then be saved in an online archive. The humor of these captions ranged from what many would consider the disgusting to the surreal, and from the low-brow to the cerebral. Several running jokes developed over the 500 strip run of the series. Recurring themes included incest and child abuse jokes, and the caption "I have no legs", originally posted on an image in which the character's lower half was cropped, was later applied ad nauseum regardless of the image's actual content.
In September 1999, Galcik received a warning letter from King Features Syndicate (publishers of The Family Circus), citing copyright violations on the site. Despite the support of the site's fans, Galcik, who had grown tired of wading through increasingly repetitive submissions, complied after a phone conversation with Keane. In his closing statement, Galcik said while he believed that Dysfunctional Family Circus was legally protected parody, he had developed a grudging respect for the long and continual effort by Bil Keane. The captions for the 500th and final strip were completed in November 1999.
Despite King Features' wishes, archives of the series have repeatedly appeared in various sites around the web. Other web sites, unconnected to Spinnwebe, have used the Dysfunctional Family Circus name and format since as well.
External links
- Archive of Dysfunctional Family Circus pictures and captions (http://free.hostdepartment.com/y/yoursexypenguin/index.html)
- "The Family Circuss", unaffiliated page created in the style of the Dysfunctional Family Circus (http://www.geocities.com/familycircuss)