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.<ref name="time100830"/><ref name="bwe100830"/> The comic's title is a combination of the names of its parody targets.<ref name="bwe100830"/>
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."<ref name="jez100827"/><ref name="mission"/> 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.<ref name="time100830"/><ref name="tosh30"/> 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.<ref name="jc100810"/>
Critical reaction
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."<ref name="time100830"/> Sarah Walker of VH1's Best Week Ever said that while it's "not the most original idea" that Jersey Circus "is still great".<ref name="bwe100830"/> Josh Jackson of Paste magazine noted the parody's broad appeal and that readers "don’t have to be a fan" to "appreciate the discordant humor".<ref name="pas100827"/> 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".<ref name="tosh30"/>

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