The Family Circus had been mouthing cute and wholesome one-liners for decades. But in 1995, web surfers discovered they liked writing their own captions for Jeffy, Dolly, Billy, and PJ. ("One lightning-quick motion, and Thel had snapped Not Me's neck...")

The Dysfunctional Family Circus flourished for four years, with over half a million captions submitted by at least 2500 different web surfers. ("Jeffy, the restraining order says a minimum 100 feet from mommy!") A team of volunteer editors picked out the best ones, which were then displayed on the site of a guy named Spinn.

His "Dysfunctional Family Circus" successfully channeled a larger untapped angst over the cheery strip -- into a brilliant communal parody. Strangers came together to contemplate new interpretations of the images, writing captions that were brash, sophisticated, and crass. They gradually developed their own lore about the characters' history, until --

Well, eventually Bil Keane's lawyers showed up. This story ends with a memo from Billy, an amicable agreement between Spinn and Keane, and a final 570 captions giving final picture #500 it's well-deserved flourish.

"And so it ends.... not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a weeping infant learning the black art of levitation from a televised clown."