''The Clown'' is a series published in the British comic anthology '' 2000 AD'' between 1992 and 1994. It was created by

Igor Goldkind Igor Goldkind (born April 20, 1960, in Lansing, Michigan), raised San Diego, California. He is an author, poet, and lecturer who specializes in digital storytelling and information architecture. Biography The son of San Diego State University a ...

and Robert Bliss. The story is about a clown who goes on a violent rampage to avenge the decapitation of his pony Toby.

Creation and concept

Igor Goldkind was originally hired to launch ''

Crisis A crisis (: crises; : critical) is any event or period that will lead to an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, or all of society. Crises are negative changes in the human or environmental affairs, especially when ...

'' and later worked in PR for ''2000 AD'' before eventually contributing one-off stories to both ''Crisis'' and ''

Tharg's Future Shocks ''Tharg's Future Shocks'' is a long-running series of short strips appearing in the British weekly comics, comic ''2000 AD (comics), 2000 AD'' since 1977. The name originates from the fictional Tharg the Mighty, editor of 2000 AD and the book t ...

''. He developed ''The Clown'' as a series for ''2000 AD'' and intended it to be a fond parody of

Neil Gaiman Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman (; born Neil Richard Gaiman; 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, audio theatre, and screenplays. His works include the comic series ''The Sandman (comic book), The Sandma ...

’s divisive literary writing style, describing it as “'' The Sandman'' on laughing gas”. Goldkind portrays the Clown as an “existential

Mr. Magoo Mr. Magoo, whose first name is "Quincy", is a fictional cartoon character created at the UPA animation studio in 1949. Voiced for many years by Jim Backus, Mr. Magoo is an elderly, wealthy, short-statured retiree who gets into a series of comi ...

..more fixated on his ideas about reality than reality itself” and credits ''

The Sorrows of Young Werther ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'' (; ), or simply ''Werther'', is a 1774 epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, which appeared as a revised edition in 1787. It was one of the main novels in the ''Sturm und Drang'' ...

'' as an inspiration for the series’s satirical, solipsistic "metaphysical slapstick".

Publication history

* "The Clown Book 1" (in ''2000 AD'' #774-779, 1992) * "The Clown Book 2: Prologue" (in ''2000 AD'' #841, 1993) * "Vale of Tears" (with Greg Staples, in ''2000 AD Yearbook 1994'', 1993) * "The Clown Book 2" (with Robert Bliss/Greg Staples/Nick Percival, in ''2000 AD'' #881-888, 1994) The first book was reprinted in ''Classic 2000 AD'' #10-11, 1996

References

External links

*
The 2000 AD A.B.C. #26: The Clown
' at

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Clown 2000 A.D. 1992 comics debuts 1993 comics endings Parody comics Parodies of comics 2000 AD comic strips 2000 AD characters Comics characters introduced in 1992 Fictional clowns