Created by: Rik Offenberger
Art by: Milton Estevam

For three generations spanning more than 100 years, Circo Lorenzo was the premier circus attraction for Spanish-speaking performers. If you spoke Spanish anywhere in North America you had seen Circo Lorenzo. The circus itself was a third-generation operation, with many performers coming from multigenerational circus families. The circus featured beautiful aerial acts and tremendously funny clowns, but it was best known for its animal acts. The lion tamers were fierce, and audiences could hardly believe they survived night after night. However, the stars of the show were the elephants. The parade of elephants was magnificent. No one had larger elephants, and no one had better tricks. Elephants could roll on balls, carry performers on their trunks, and aerialists would jump back and forth from elephant to elephant. Then one day the Times wrote an exposé on circus elephants in a different circus; the ramifications were widespread throughout the industry. The biggest multi-ring circus organization discontinued its elephant show. Animal rights organizations descended upon Circo Lorenzo demanding they cancel their elephant act, their lion shows, and eliminate all forms of animal acts. At first, Circo Lorenzo tried to prove how humanely they treated their animals and fight these animal activists, but over time the audience stopped coming and this multi-generational circus was in dire financial straits.
Pedro Lorenzo was crushed by this predicament and had always planned on leaving the circus to his son, just as his father left it to him. He had no idea what he was going to do or what would happen to all of his performers, including the aerialists, clowns, and sideshow performers, all of whom had been counting on him and the circus to survive. To survive, Pedro Lorenzo worked a deal with Adrián “El Jefe” Londoño who “invested in the business”. No matter how much money Lorenzo loses, Londoño writes a check for the expense. There was only one condition: Lorenzo had to travel with his Pandilla de Payasos. Unofficially called Payasos del Crimen, the band consisted of 10 clowns: Aurelio Gutiérrez, Mario Guzmán, Ricardo Bolaños, Pablo Martínez, Xavier Fernández, Jose González, Rodolfo Gómez, Alejandro López, Roberto Rodríguez, and Ricardo Medrano. All joined Circo Lorenzo as a clown act. Adrián “El Jefe” Londoño uses the traveling circus as a way to distribute drugs around the country as the circus stops in all the major U.S. cities.

BASE OF OPERATIONS: Mobile, across the United States
FIRST APPEARANCE: Lynx #1, July 2022