PAYASOS DEL CRIMEN

Created by: Rik Offenberger
Art by: Milton Estevam

For three generations over 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 who are also multi-generational. The circus featured beautiful aerial acts, tremendously funny clowns, it was best known for its animal act. The lion tamers are fierce and the audience couldn’t believe that the lion tamer would survive 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 aerialist would jump back-and-forth from elephant to elephant. Then one day the Times wrote an expose 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 Lorenzo, circus 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 and what would happen to all of his performers the aerialist, the clowns, the sideshow performers, all of whom I’ve been counting on him and the circus to be successful 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 is only one condition. Lorenzo my travel with his Pandilla de Payasos. Unofficially called Payasos del Crimen a band 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 clow 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 US Cities.

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