title: The Clown (2000 AD)
text: # The Clown (2000 AD)
  
  The Clown is a series published in the comic anthology 2000 AD between 1992 and 1994. It was created by Igor Goldkind 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 and later worked in PR for 2000 AD before eventually contributing one-off stories to both Crisis and Tharg's Future Shocks. He developed The Clown as a series for 2000 AD and intended it to be a fond parody of Neil Gaiman’s divisive literary writing style, describing it as “The Sandman on laughing gas”.
  
  Goldkind portrays the Clown as an “existential Mr. Magoo [...] more fixated on his ideas about reality than reality itself” and credits The Sorrows of Young Werther 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
  
  