clown-humor
Explanation
The Joke
The comic opens with two people discussing going to a comedy show, and one notes that clowns never seem to perform at comedy shows anymore. The other responds "I dunno. Why?" In the next panels, we see clowns performing, but their act consists of an academic lecture: "Clowns were, truly, an evolutionary departure from homo sapiens. Our costumes are so exaggerated that survival was contingent on finding a more accessible means of waste removal..." The final panel shows a child in the audience saying "I don't get it," while a clown responds "It wasn't the punchline."
The joke operates on two levels. First, it imagines a world where clowns are a literally separate species from humans, not just performers in costume. Second, it explains why clowns have disappeared from comedy shows: their humor has evolved into dry, academic self-analysis about their own evolutionary biology, which is incomprehensible and unfunny to normal audiences.
The Humor
The humor comes from the absurd inversion of what clowns are supposed to be. Clowns are traditionally the most broad, physical, and accessible form of comedy -- pratfalls, squirting flowers, pie-in-the-face gags. The comic reimagines them as having evolved into insufferable academics who deliver dense evolutionary biology lectures instead of jokes. The child's complaint ("I don't get it") and the clown's pedantic response ("It wasn't the punchline") perfectly captures the frustration of watching someone who thinks being incomprehensible is the same as being intellectual. It is also a meta-commentary on how some comedians disappear up their own intellectual pretensions.