The Clown

The Clown was a 2000 AD series about a clown, created by Igor Goldkind and Robert Bliss. It was later collected as a one-shot (see picture) and was deeply disturbing even for people who don't have coulrophobia. Basically, a homicidal clown seeks revenge for the death of his pony, Toby. The Clown appeared in progs 774 to 779, prog 841, progs 881 to 888 (drawn by Bliss and Greg Staples), and the 1994 2000 AD Yearbook (drawn by Greg Staples).

Igor Goldkind had this to say about the creation of the character: "Drugs are always involved. That and sticking your head down the nearest, darkest abyss and screaming 'Who you staring back at, Jimmy!' ... Neil Gaiman had been writing Sandman for just about a year and was getting a lot of flak in the British fan press for what was viewed as a pretentious and overly floral writing style. Pretentious, lui?

He’d also got a contract straight from Karen Berger at DC without supposedly paying his 'proper' British comics writers dues at 2000 AD.

So he was a focus for resentment, jealousy as well as some genuine criticism. But the thing was, I really liked what Neil Gaiman was doing. He was playing around behind the same door Alan Moore had opened up a couple years before him: the door with the sign that said just because it was a comic didn't mean you couldn't write it like literature ...

That was an axiom I truly believed and still do; but not everybody did. So I figured the best way I could play behind the same door that Neil was digging behind at 2000 AD without alienating a mainly British readership was to take the piss out of Neil. The Clown was always The Sandman on laughing gas.

Of course Neil actually greatly improved on his writing of Sandman after the first year and really came into his own, whereas the Clown languished as an inept, unsung and unfinished figure of ridicule."

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