| Description
Fred the Clown's rambunctious misadventures are a curious blend of bleakness and joyful absurdism. More often than not, they involve the pursuit of a lady - and lady will do, it seems, but bearded ladies are at the top of the list. Fred the Clown is the signature creation of the cartoonist Roger Langridge, whose work betrays a restless stylistic playfulness, a pessimism about human nature, and an absurdist perspective on human folly. Fred's predecessors can be traced back to Monty Python, the Goon Show and even Lewis Carroll. Visually, Langridge's approach harkens back to the inventiveness of Max Fleischer cartoons, classic newspaper strips, and the children's books of Maurice Sendak and Dr. Seuss. The sensibility, though, is thorougly modern - no classic style goes unsubverted, no story ends without a "Huh?" - inducing emotional ambiguity or a pomposity-puncturing ironic gag. Fred the Clown. In the tradition of Buster Keaton, Samuel Beckett, Charlie Brown, and that other clown named Koko. Only moreso.
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