But Doctor, I am Pagliacci spotted in the wild

I can’t help it, I continue to look, but not too closely, at that Super Circus comic book I shared something from last week. What can I say, there’s something I find fascinating in stories about what’s supposed to be a realistic enough circus — they keep having money problems, just like every circus in every piece of pop culture ever — that keeps finding reasons to make the main cast into talking animals. This week, I got to actually looking at the two-page printed story for Super Circus #1, “Laugh Clown, LAUGH!” and got a surprise.

A big title panel showing a clown and little circus figures, plus several paragraphs starting the story of Antonio, a clown who has to get ready for the show despite himself feeling pretty down. — Page 39 of 52 from **Super Circus #1**, cover date January 1951. Author and artist uncredited. I’m sure they would have made the title panel art larger if they could have got away with it. The lower column makes me think someone had a future in drawing boxes of animal crackers, though.

Two columns of text filling the page, finishing the story of Antonio the clown who goes to the doctor to get an examination, and is physically fine, but still depressed, and the doctor prescribes going to see the clown Antonio perform. — Page 40 of 52 from **Super Circus #1**, cover date January 1951. Author uncredited. I know doctor-patient confidentiality has always been a thing but did it used to cover the doctor not knowing the patient’s name?

Now, this is not anywhere near the origins of this joke. These two-page printed stories existed because comic books needed two pages of text editorial matter to qualify for the cheaper media mailing rates. Nobody was writing any of these to be remotely original and, anyway, versions of the joke go back centuries. But it’s a delight to find someone told the joke, in way more words than it could use to be funny but just enough words to qualify as media mail, and I wanted to make you look too. So there.

I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean that Antonio says he sleeps well, “like a top”. I mean, I know what it’s supposed to mean, but I don’t know why it’s supposed to mean that. Sorry. That’s the sort of phrase Mystery Science Theater 3000 could have turned into a gag running through the whole episode and maybe called back two or three times.