Cartoon One Three Three One

A business labeled BINGO’S CLOWN SCHOOL! LEARN TO BE A CLOWN IN NINETY DAYS! The proprietor stands in front and explains to a passerby: “We spend one day on facepaint, one day on pratfalls, and 88 days on how not to scare the shit out of kids.”

My apologies for the curse word.

The idea of a “scary clown” has absolutely destroyed what used to be a wonderful, wholesome, millennia-old institution. My younger readers might be surprised to learn that clowns didn’t used to be considered scary. There was The Joker, but he was never actually scary until recently, and there was that serial killer in the 70’s who was a birthday clown for a side gig, but he was pretty much unknown outside the ranks of serial killer fans (and they were a niche fandom back in the ‘80s). I think the real poison was planted by the scary clown doll in “Poltergeist,” and then cemented, of course, by Stephen King and “It.” Now you never ever see a benign clown, anywhere. At Halloween, scary clowns outnumber clowny clowns 99 to 1. It stinks.

Stepping off my soap box now.

The great Margreet de Heer honors this humble substack with a lovely one three oh seven:

This is wonderful, of course — it’s a de Heer. Margreet is really a master of the craft; she’s an expert in both form and humor. I like everything about it. And I’m saddened (or delighted) to see that the Zeitgeist is also dead. Thank you, Margreet.

I should give my friend Stefani credit for inspiring this joke. I overheard her tell someone she had a bad case of the Mondays and it made me wonder if the Mondays could be fatal. Thanks, Stef!

Pls draw my comics. I’ll post them here.