Writer: W. Maxwell Prince
Artists: Various
Image Comics, 2021
IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE reading any one of the six issues of HAHA SAD CLOWN STORIES singly as originally published, and still manage to read the rest. One shot and a hapless reader is likely to drift off, only glimpses seen since: transformed, turned to something else, or somewhere else entirely. To stay on course, get the collected stories by writer W. Maxwell Prince and various collaborating artists, and brace for a gentle, maniacal feast of fun, haha, from the clown’s point of view.
In these six stories, illustrated in succession by collaborating artists Vanesa del Rey, Zoe Thorogood, Roger Langridge, Patrick Horvath, Gabriel Hernández Walta, and Martín Morazzo, the motion of the twisting plots and art carry you unexpectedly somewhere beyond the laughable, beyond the grimaceable, something you might have wanted to disown if it had not already reached out and scooped you up, dangling; and you hang on. Colorist Chris O’Halloran in three of the six stories, at beginning and end, casts a vaguely grotesque, funerary feel over the narrative and action appropriate to the whole set.
So sad. Poignant. Pathetic. Indelibly creative. Yet never ever quite funny. Dappled touches of fantasy and fulfillment light the way.
Family life with dad the clown is tough in an age of belt-tightening layoffs. “You gotta face the facts, kiddo …” says the boss at Funville, “What was funny a few years ago ain’t so funny anymore.”
A little girl following her mother is shaped for the Funville stage like molten bronze poured into a wax mold.
A tragic mime inspires a generation to test reality.
A suburban birthday-party clown disappears.
An ancient dame still wears her grease paint in the daily performance of her solitary life in her ancient house packed with circus memorabilia.
A middle-aged clown guy senses something is terribly wrong with him, one part of him says so, others keep saying so, but no one seems to get it right.
The stories here are actually too mercurial to deposit in a summary. First one theme appears, then another, and … and another, like a multi-colored scarf swirling from the sleeve in a comedy act, green to gold to azure and shocking pink, each addition making it something different than what it seemed to be before.
In comedy, imagery and emotion resonate in one’s own experiences, so the haha response feels genuine, from the heart, even when intruding on uncomfortable memories, where at least now a small smile stamps the lid of the crypt. Every fool knows it. The masks of comedy and tragedy gratefully intertwine.
In these Haha Sad Clown Stories, however, the idea to laugh, the laughable idea to laugh, gurgles away into embarrassed silence. One emerges too stunned to make out what sort of performance that was; and once across the threshold homeward, maybe more …
A song.
Do you hear it?
Listen.