User:Dravecky/Sandbox/Jersey Circus

Jersey Circus is a webcomic by a team of seven writers, six of whom are from Pennsylvania, launched in August 2010. It is a mashup of images from the long-running The Family Circus newspaper comic strip and dialogue from the popular MTV television series Jersey Shore. The comic's title is a combination of the names of its parody targets.

The creators of Jersey Circus state that their mission is to reconcile their "guilty delight in Jersey Shore, a bastion of trash" with their "eye-rolling fondness for the Family Circus." Critically well-received and the focus of intense media scrutiny when it launched, the site stressed that it was a parody, not connected to either the comic strip or the television series in any way.

Art
The parody comics, like The Family Circus originals from which they are created, are a single circular panel with a line of Jersey Shore dialogue below the artwork plus occasional additional dialogue in the panel itself. The art in Jersey Circus is taken from several different decades of the 50-year history of The Family Circus. The meme was reversed in an August 10, 2010, panel where the image was a photograph of a Jersey Shore cast member and the dialogue was lifted intact from a Family Circus panel.

Reception
Noting that "Family Circus is ripe for parody on the Internet," Megan Friedman of Time, said "There's something about the innocence of the comic's kids that just needs a little dark humor thrown in. Enter Jersey Circus, which gives little Jeffy some Jersey Shore flair." Sarah Walker of VH1's Best Week Ever said that while it's "not the most original idea" that Jersey Circus "is still great". Josh Jackson of Paste magazine noted the parody's broad appeal and that readers "don’t have to be a [Jersey Shore] fan" to "appreciate the discordant humor". Mike Pomeranz, a researcher for Comedy Central's Tosh.0, is "not sure why it takes a team of seven writers to create these things" but describes the webcomic as "pretty fun". Anthony Augustine wrote in the Winnipeg Free Press that the comic strip brought together the "guilty delight in Jersey Shore, a bastion of trash, with our eye-rolling fondness for the Family Circus" and the creators "have hit pop-culture gold".