Based on your title, I’d say you got the joke. “Comic relief” means something a little different here.
It’s a reference to the phrase “comic relief”. Normally that’s the one funny character in a serious movie. You know, the one the entire audience is hoping will die but who almost never does? Rubin is playing on the other meaning of “relieve oneself” as meaning “to eliminate waste products.”
I wouldn’t have gotten it at all if I hadn’t read your title… which I didn’t until Mark M pointed it out… So did write the title without realizing it was a pun? (If so, why?) Did you think you were making a slight pun but it didn’t occur to you the cartoonist was making the exact same pun? Did you realize that both you and the cartoonist were making the same pun but assumed that wasn’t the joke?
“For this relief much thanks” occurs very early in Hamlet, and the sense of “relief” is one shift taking over from the preceding one, at guard duty.
I was aware the phrase gets quoted in Ulysses, with another sense. But I had long thought it was in Chapter Three , when Stephen (who had earlier been talking about Hamlet) stopped to urinate during his walk along the strand. But no, it is not used in that scene.
Instead, it comes up twice, in Bloom scenes, in Chapters 13 and 14. Bloom, who enjoys knowing odd bits that we might think are beyond his education, does know the line is from Hamlet. This passage is just after he observes the girl on the beach leaning back and exposing her undies:
Did me good all the same. Off colour after Kiernan’s, Dignam’s. For this relief much thanks. In Hamlet, that is. Lord! It was all things combined. Excitement. When she leaned back, felt an ache at the butt of my tongue. Your head it simply swirls. He’s right. Might have made a worse fool of myself however. Instead of talking about nothing. Then I will tell you all. Still it was a kind of language between us. It couldn’t be? No, Gerty they called her. Might be false name however like my name and the address Dolphin’s barn a blind.
Mitch, I used the title “comic relief” because it’s a well-known phrase in addition to being the name of a fund-raising organization.
This was a CIDU because the phrase “relieving yourself comically” made no sense to me.
The father clown is telling the kid clownren that they should have gone to the loo before they left on their journey, much as non-clown parents tell non-clown children. “Should’ve gone before we went” and all that. But being a clown family, when they do have to relieve themselves they have to do it comically in a public cartwheely, bouncing off the walls, trousers-falling-off kind of way with much whipped cream flying about, not by privately urinating into a bowl as most other pee-ple do.
I’m thinking that what *might* be humorous would be having them driving past a theater presenting a very serious drama. Running in there to relieve themselves would create quite a stir while having performed in front of the crew at the big top would have been fine.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Based on your title, I’d say you got the joke. “Comic relief” means something a little different here.
It’s a reference to the phrase “comic relief”. Normally that’s the one funny character in a serious movie. You know, the one the entire audience is hoping will die but who almost never does? Rubin is playing on the other meaning of “relieve oneself” as meaning “to eliminate waste products.”
I wouldn’t have gotten it at all if I hadn’t read your title… which I didn’t until Mark M pointed it out… So did write the title without realizing it was a pun? (If so, why?) Did you think you were making a slight pun but it didn’t occur to you the cartoonist was making the exact same pun? Did you realize that both you and the cartoonist were making the same pun but assumed that wasn’t the joke?
“For this relief much thanks” occurs very early in Hamlet, and the sense of “relief” is one shift taking over from the preceding one, at guard duty.
I was aware the phrase gets quoted in Ulysses, with another sense. But I had long thought it was in Chapter Three , when Stephen (who had earlier been talking about Hamlet) stopped to urinate during his walk along the strand. But no, it is not used in that scene.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4300/4300-h/4300-h.htm#chap13
Instead, it comes up twice, in Bloom scenes, in Chapters 13 and 14. Bloom, who enjoys knowing odd bits that we might think are beyond his education, does know the line is from Hamlet. This passage is just after he observes the girl on the beach leaning back and exposing her undies:
Did me good all the same. Off colour after Kiernan’s, Dignam’s. For this relief much thanks. In Hamlet, that is. Lord! It was all things combined. Excitement. When she leaned back, felt an ache at the butt of my tongue. Your head it simply swirls. He’s right. Might have made a worse fool of myself however. Instead of talking about nothing. Then I will tell you all. Still it was a kind of language between us. It couldn’t be? No, Gerty they called her. Might be false name however like my name and the address Dolphin’s barn a blind.
Mitch, I used the title “comic relief” because it’s a well-known phrase in addition to being the name of a fund-raising organization.
This was a CIDU because the phrase “relieving yourself comically” made no sense to me.
The father clown is telling the kid clownren that they should have gone to the loo before they left on their journey, much as non-clown parents tell non-clown children. “Should’ve gone before we went” and all that. But being a clown family, when they do have to relieve themselves they have to do it comically in a public cartwheely, bouncing off the walls, trousers-falling-off kind of way with much whipped cream flying about, not by privately urinating into a bowl as most other pee-ple do.
I’m thinking that what *might* be humorous would be having them driving past a theater presenting a very serious drama. Running in there to relieve themselves would create quite a stir while having performed in front of the crew at the big top would have been fine.