Dysfunctional Family Circus

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
"Mommy, why does my cereal taste like bitter almond?" (Example from Strip #1 of Dysfunctional Family Circus; fair use)
"Mommy, why does my cereal taste like bitter almond?" (Example from Strip #1 of Dysfunctional Family Circus; fair use)

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.

Contents

[edit] The DFC booklets

The Dysfunctional Family Circus began circulating in 1989 as a series of booklets found in record and book stores, coffee houses and nightclubs in several U.S. and European cities, including San Francisco, Chicago, New York, London and Madrid. They were also distributed by mail to those making requests and posting their mailing address to select Usenet groups.

The booklet series included 15 titles:

  1. Grandma's Not Dead Yet!
  2. See, I Told You Cats Could Smell Dead People!
  3. Ibex, My Ass! That's a Goat!
  4. Who Wants to See a Hamster Dance?
  5. Eat Snow Hobo!
  6. Grandma's Starting to Sprout!
  7. It All Comes Back, Except One Tablespoon!
  8. This Guy's Wankin' Off!
  9. Wait, I Think My Dick's Stuck!
  10. Boy, This Dog is Fucked Up!
  11. Oh Yeah? Well, Kiss This!
  12. Her, Us, Motel, Tonight!
  13. Crotch Shot!
  14. Mommy! PJ's Tryin' to Get Out!
  15. Holy Shit! It's a Priesty Boy!

Each booklet measured 4-1/4" x 5.5" and was attributed to an anonymous publisher whose name was a unique anagram of "Bil Keane." A French translation of volume #4, entitled "Qui Veut Voir Un Hamster Dansant?" was distributed by mail, as was an unnumbered volume entitled "Guess Where I Can Fit This!" The booklets spawned two annual calendars, a t-shirt, and a set of drink coasters, before being retired.

[edit] Running gags

[edit] Print runs

The first two issues were 16 pages each. Issue three expanded to 40 pages. The remaining issues in the main series were 32 pages apiece. The initial press run for each issue was 250 copies. Issues five and eight had secondary runs of 100 copies each.

[edit] Trivia

Several cartoons from the booklets were reprinted in the Anderson Valley Advertiser in Boonville, California, and Browbeat magazine. Others were reproduced in fanzines and as inserts for CDs by the National Hardwood Floor Association and others.

Only one cartoon (#5, page 14) used the original cartoon caption ("The party's not over yet — I just came home to get my siren and handcuffs").

[edit] SpinnWebe

The best known (or perhaps most notorious) version was that run by Greg Galcik on SpinnWebe from 1994 to 1999 with a run of exactly 500 comics. Often called "DFC," 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 aspects of the art itself, such as the Featureless Void (as Keane's comics frequently lacked a background), and Jeffy's Hypno-Hair (his wavy hair with which he hypnotized others in the family). Another running joke involved breaking the fourth wall and commenting on what Bil drew in the strip that day, such as when Thel was vacuuming with many toys strewn about, one such caption was "That [jerk] Bil would draw all this [stuff] in here the one day I vacuum!", and the children were aware that they were stuck within the "circle" that outlined the strip, such as when the scene was full of Christmas presents, a submitted caption was "I tell, ya we could hawk more stuff if you just made the circle bigger!"

[edit] Running gags

  • Featureless Void
  • Hypno-Hair
  • NAMBLA
  • Drug abuse
  • References to the "circle"
  • Inside "Zone" and "Asterisk" jokes
  • Bil's artistic abilities, for example:
    • Zip-A-Tone shading
    • The shape of characters' heads (Melon-shaped)
    • Characters only having one nostril
  • Interaction with characters from other comic strips
  • The "psychic fern," seemingly the only plant in the Keane household, allegedly preparing to mentally dominate the world
  • Bil as an alcoholic
  • "Uncle Roy", Bil's homosexual lover
  • Bil's lack of pupils
  • Thel being promiscuous
  • The kids being the spawn of Satan
  • Bil being lazy
  • References to Bil being a talentless hack
  • Incest
  • Murder, usually of a family member
  • Child abuse
  • The word "oing," originally a sound effect used to describe a malfunctioning garbage disposal
  • Uniboob (and Thel's chest in general)
  • Pet eating
  • Racism
  • "Memoirs" (Autobiography of a character, usually Billy or Dolly)
  • Characters arguing over contractural obligations to the cartoon
  • Depicting the comic as a collector's plate on sale from The Franklin Mint or QVC
  • Jokes that were acknowledged as not being particularly funny, yet kept re-appearing (e.g., references to Soylent Green, "pull my finger")
  • Poop as the universal glue ("poop holds the tent wher it is"}
  • Multiple inside jokes born from typos or rejected comments, such as "trippin my nutsack in a frenzy of dikplay" and "log of fag"

[edit] The End of the DFC

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 could be defended as a work of interactive parody, he had developed a grudging respect for the long and continual effort by Bil Keane. Galcik noted that Keane was both polite and gracious in his request for the strip to end, pointing out that the characters being parodied were based on Keane's own family. Keane also agreed to allow Galcik to continue the strip for an additional week in order to reach strip #500. 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.

SpinnWebe continued to run "It's A Dysfunctional Life" (later renamed "A1-AAA AmeriCaptions"), which was similar to the Dysfunctional Family Circus, but used audience-submitted photographs instead of Family Circus cartoons.

[edit] DFC's role in Amazon.com review spoofing

Although authors and fans had used the "Review" feature at Amazon.com to plug or pan books, the first verified, widespread use of the review feature to satirize authors was undertaken by regular contributors of DFC in 1998. The contributors (using assumed names) submitted dozens of spoof reviews of Keane's work. The reviews gained the notice of the popular press and soon Amazon limited access to the review feature to registered users only.

[edit] External links

Other sites that have used the Dysfunctional Family Circus name and format

Other parodies in the style of the Dysfunctional Family Circus

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../d/y/s/Dysfunctional_Family_Circus_6214.html"