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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 No. 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.
217:, and from the lowbrow to the cerebral. Bil Keane was aware of the site's existence from early on and initially had no objection to it, stating that the jokes were sometimes better than his own. His publisher later sent a cease-and-desist letter, which was initially ridiculed on the website, but after a telephone conversation between Galcik and Keane, Dysfunctional Family Circus was taken down.
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to comment on what Bil drew in the strip that day; when Thel was vacuuming with many toys strewn about, one such caption was "That dickhead Bil would draw all this shit in here the one day I vacuum!", and in some others the children were aware that they were stuck within the "circle" that framed the
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violations on the site. Despite the support of the site's fans, Galcik 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
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jokes; aspects of the art itself, such as the featureless void (as Keane's comics frequently lacked a background); and Jeffy's Hypno-Hair (the character's wavy hair was used in parodies to hypnotize others in the family). Another parody theme was to portray the parents as unfaithful to each other,
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from June 1995 to 1999 with a run of exactly 500 comics. It attracted between 50,000 and 70,000 page views per day. Galcik and other editors would select the captions they considered to be the funniest and most original, which would then be saved in an online archive. The humor of these captions
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was created anonymously and began circulating as a series of booklets found in record and book stores, coffee houses, and nightclubs in several U.S. and
European cities, notably San Francisco, Chicago, New York, London, and Madrid. They were also distributed by mail to those making requests and
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Often called "DFC", the
Dysfunctional Family Circus was first brought to the World Wide Web by Mark Jason Dominus around March 1994. This version featured one (later expanded to four) original Keane cartoon without captions, and ran submission software to allow viewers to suggest their own
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inches (11 cm × 14 cm) and each was attributed to a different nonexistent publisher; each "publisher's" name was a different anagram of "Bil Keane". A French translation of volume No. 4, entitled "Qui Veut Voir Un
Hamster Dansant?" ("Who Wants To See A Dancing Hamster?"), was
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magazine. Others were reproduced in fanzines and as inserts for CDs by the
National Hardwood Floor Association and others. Only one cartoon (No. 5, page 14) used the original cartoon caption ("The party's not over yet — I just came home to get my siren and handcuffs").
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After DFC ended, SpinnWebe continued to run "It's A Dysfunctional Life" (later renamed "A1-AAA AmeriCaptions"), which applied the
Dysfunctional Family Circus's parody-by-captions concept to viewer-submitted photographs instead of to the cartoons.
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The first two issues were 16 pages each. Issue 3 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 5 and 8 had secondary runs of 100 copies each.
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distributed by mail, as was an unnumbered volume entitled "Guess Where I Can Fit This!". Before being retired, the booklets spawned two annual calendars, a T-shirt, and a set of
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including Thel claiming to not know who any of the children's real fathers are and Bil having an unseen homosexual lover "Uncle" Roy. Another running joke involved
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strip, such as when the scene was full of
Christmas presents and a submitted caption was "I tell ya, we could hawk more stuff if you just made the circle bigger!"
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52:. The most popular version, edited by Greg Galcik, began in 1995 and ceased in 1999 following a telephone conversation between Galcik and Keane.
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captions. Captions were mostly unfiltered. It was discontinued after about a year, and the concept was adopted by Greg Galcik.
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Galcik's version became the best known (or perhaps most notorious) and ran on
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in 1989, by 1994 various versions of it began to appear on the
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Churbuck, David C. (October 10, 1994). "Dial-a-catalog".
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Several cartoons from the booklets were reprinted in the
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410:"'Family Circus' creator tries to stop Web site parody"
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posting their mailing address to select Usenet groups.
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454:"Comics: Meet the Artist, with Bil Keane"
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90:It All Comes Back, Except One Tablespoon!
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68:The booklet series included 15 titles:
19:was the name of several long-running
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519:Glave, James (September 21, 1999).
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521:"Family Circus Parody Folds Tent"
515:- An explanation of Spinn's site.
391:"Keane KO's Family Circus Parody"
81:Who Wants to See a Hamster Dance?
452:Tobin, Suzanne (March 1, 2002).
477:Walker, Jesse (December 1999).
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17:The Dysfunctional Family Circus
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111:Mommy! PJ's Tryin' to Get Out!
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102:Oh Yeah? Well, Kiss This!
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36:'s artwork with altered
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93:This Guy's Wankin' Off!
72:Grandma's Not Dead Yet!
616:Where the Buffalo Roam
412:. The Arizona Republic
118:Each booklet measured
169:Boonville, California
733:1994 webcomic debuts
655:Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan
591:Witches and Stitches
430:Gunty, Christopher.
434:. American Catholic
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598:T.H.E. Fox
463:2008-06-24
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363:References
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250:), citing
211:disgusting
608:1990–1993
351:Scatology
346:Sacrilege
252:copyright
206:SpinnWebe
186:SpinnWebe
180:SpinnWebe
60:In 1989,
34:Bil Keane
535:Archived
503:Archived
394:Archived
331:Oral sex
173:Browbeat
38:captions
21:parodies
687:Dilbert
215:surreal
213:to the
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483:Reason
378:Forbes
341:Racism
326:Murder
316:Incest
301:homage
263:Themes
222:incest
171:, and
583:1980s
525:Wired
299:Film
665:1995
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224:and
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