Flaming Carrot Comics

AUTHOR: Burden, Bob

ARTIST: Bob Burden (illustrator); Roxanne Starr (letterer)

PUBLISHER: Dark Horse Comics

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1979-1987, 1988-1994

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1997-2006

Publication History

The publication history of Flaming Carrot Comics is almost as bizarre and convoluted as the series itself. The seriesbegan as a drunken joke. In 1979, Bob Burden was living with a comic book fan who was determined to create what he hoped would be the next great independent comic book series: Visions. Burden watched as his roommate spent a week tweaking a single page. While they were drinking one night, Burden boasted that he could write and illustrate an eight-page comic book in a single night, and if he did, his friend should publish it in Visions. Burden delivered on his own dare, penning the first Flaming Carrot installment; it was published in Visions, issue 1, by the Atlanta Fantasy Fair in 1979. Flaming Carrot appeared in all subsequent yearly issues of Visions until 1987.

In 1981, Burden self-published Flaming Carrot Comics, issue 1, using the publisher title Killian Barracks Press. A year later, a four-page Flaming Carrot comic in Visions, issue 4,caught the attention of Dave Sim, creator of the self-published series Cerebus (1977-2004), also initially a spoof comic. Sim first incorporated the Flaming Carrot character into the pages of Cerebus and later published Flaming Carrot as a regular series under the Aardvark-Vanaheim imprint. The first issue was published in May, 1984. It ran for five issues until January, 1985, even appearing once in 3-D.

Twelve more issues of the comic were published by Renegade Press between March, 1985, and July, 1987. Then, the series was picked up by Dark Horse Comics, which published fourteen more issues of Flaming Carrot from June, 1988, to October, 1994; a Flaming Carrot Stories special in 1994; and Flaming Carrot Comics Collected Album in 1997. The last Flaming Carrot comic published by Dark Horse was the crossover special Flaming Carrot and Reid Fleming, the World’s Toughest Milkman,which appeared in 2002.

Over the years, the Flaming Carrot continued to appear in numerous crossover comics, including Cerebus, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,and Normalman-Megaton Man. In 2006, the series was relaunched by Image Comics with Bob Burden’s Flaming Carrot Comics, Volume 6: Unacceptable Behavior.

Plot

The series revolves around Flaming Carrot, a crime-fighting superhero without superpowers who wears a large carrot mask with a flame on top. As described in several exposés throughout the series, the Flaming Carrot is brave, ruthless, and incredibly dumb. His stupidity is rumored to have been brought on by reading five thousand comic books in a single sitting. The Carrot speaks in incomplete sentences that often lack verbs. He is a heavy drinker and a tireless womanizer, often sleeping with inappropriately young women. Despite his poor judgment and imbecilic behavior, he manages to avert catastrophe by sheer dumb luck. For example, he inadvertently deactivates a bomb by putting a quarter into it, thinking that it is a soda machine.

The Flaming Carrot bounces around using a nuclear-powered pogo stick. His flaming mask, pogo stick, and various other weapons and technological devices are designed by Dr. Heller, an elusive mad scientist and the Flaming Carrot’s right-hand man. The Flaming Carrot lives in the unfashionable Palookaville section of Iron City, a working-class town, where he is widely lauded as a “blue collar” superhero.

After a few years of fighting crime, the Flaming Carrot indulges in alcohol, womanizing, and other vices. He burns out, spends all his money, and ends up in Shanty Town, dropping from the public eye until journalist Radzak Zokey reads about him in a comic book and seeks him out for an interview. The Flaming Carrot refuses to talk to the journalist until the latter gets a haircut. When aliens begin taking over Iron City, Zokey gets a haircut and returns to the Carrot, persuading him to save them all from the scourge. The Flaming Carrot agrees, emerging from obscurity to become the people’s superhero again.

Most of the issues are self-contained stories that can be easily understood out of the context of the rest of the series. The majority of the stories follow a similar template: A villain wreaks havoc on Iron City, causing catastrophic death and destruction. Flaming Carrot manages to save the day using an obscure weapon or random, nonsensical tactic. For example, in “Road Hogs from Outer Space,” the Flaming Carrot saves the world from mass-murdering aliens by telling them about income tax; the aliens are so outraged by the concept that they leave Earth by themselves. Typically, the Flaming Carrot is honored by the city in a highly publicized event or makes an appearance at a press conference at the end of the story. He is frequently given awards for bravery, which are often presented to him by buxom women, typically dressed in bikinis.

The Flaming Carrot fights a variety of bizarre and quirky villains, including the Artless Dodger, who massacres several people in order to steal a box of vanilla wafers; a vampire dog with blood dripping from its canine teeth; and the Chair, whose only superpower is to turn into a chair. The Carrot stops several alien invasions and even battles Death himself.

Some of the stories are highly experimental, such as “Adventures in Limbo,” wherein circus workers discuss how to dispose of the body of an elephant that one of them killed. Afraid that the elephant’s death will bring bad press, they try to dispose of the elephant’s corpse by marrying it off to a jilted bride. When this does not work, they try to lose the elephant in a poker game and finally end up sending the elephant to film producer Dino De Laurentiis’s studio in Hollywood.

The Mystery Men first appear in Flaming Carrot, issues 16 and 17,and play a prominent role throughout the rest of the series. The Mystery Men occupy the lowest rung of the superhero ladder. These misfits either lack superpowers altogether or possess uncontrollable, unremarkable, or useless powers. However, they do all possess impressive names, flashy costumes, and unshakable zeal. Since most of them are just ordinary people with more chutzpah than talent or competence, the group has a high casualty rate.

Volumes

•Flaming Carrot Comics Presents Flaming Carrot,Man of Mystery (1997). Collects issues 1-3. Flaming Carrot stops an alien invasion by telling the aliens to go home, and he battles Death.

•Flaming Carrot Comics Presents, the Wild Shall Wild Remain (1997). Collects issues 4-11 and adds a new five-page story. The Flaming Carrot lifts his mask.

•Flaming Carrot’s Greatest Hits (1998). Collects issues 12-18. The Mystery Men make their first appearance.

•Flaming Carrot Comics,Fortune Favors the Bold (1998). Collects issues 19-24. Flaming Carrot stops yet another alien invasion, this time with the help of a bubble pipe.

•Bob Burden’s Flaming Carrot Comics, Volume 6: Unacceptable Behavior (2006). Relaunch of the series with Image Comics.

Characters

•Flaming Carrot, the protagonist, is an unintelligent superhero with no superpowers who wears a large carrot mask that is almost as long as his body. On top of the mask, and above his head, is a flame created by an infernal device designed by Dr. Heller. The flame can be used as a weapon. The Flaming Carrot always wears flippers on the off-chance that he might someday have to swim. He carries a nuclear-powered pogo stick and a pair of plungers, which he uses to climb walls. What he lacks in superpowers, he makes up for in daring and dumb luck.

•Dr. Heller is a scientist who designs most of the Flaming Carrot’s regalia and equipment and helps him fight crime. He is a workaholic who does not halt scientific experiments for interviews with reporters. He takes his work and himself extremely seriously and has a sign on the wall that says, “I am always right,” which he cites as scientific evidence.

•Death is one of the Flaming Carrot’s more notable adversaries, appearing in the issue Death Gets Drunk. Death wears a trench coat and dark, triangular sunglasses and has a long, razor-thin mustache. In addition to taking lives, Death has the power to turn people into bugs and make wild bulls appear out of thin air. Although alcohol has no effect on him, a large dose of strychnine can make him tipsy.

•Mr. Furious is one of the Mystery Men. He is so furious about crime that he is impervious to bullets, although he loves to shoot them at other people. He wears a black and yellow costume and uses a machine gun. When not in his superhero costume, he works as a car repossessor.

•The Shoveler is another of the Mystery Men. He is a blue-collar ditchdigger, quarryman, and superhero who wields a lethal shovel that once belonged to King Arthur of Camelot. The Shoveler’s costume consists of a pair of purple overalls with a large “S” on the bib and a black mask worn over the eyes.

•Sponge Boy is one of Flaming Carrot’s good friends. He is stick-figured, diminutive, and made completely of sponge. Virtually helpless because of his body size and lack of solidity, he is kidnapped by the bandit moons in a 1984 issue and is finally rescued over the course of several crossover issues with Cerebus in 1987. Cartoon artist Stephen Hillenburg had originally wanted to name SpongeBob SquarePants “SpongeBoy,” but when Hillenburg learned that Burden had trademarked the name “Sponge Boy,” he renamed his character SpongeBob, in honor of Burden.

Artistic Style

Burden’s line drawings are clean, well-defined, and surprisingly realistic for a comic as experimental as Flaming Carrot. The characters’ facial features are caricatured but not wildly exaggerated. However, the female characters are consistently drawn with grotesquely large hips and busts.

Burden adds random objects here and there in the illustrations, lending to the comic’s surrealistic aesthetic. For example, the Oddity Exhibit in “The Artless Dodger” features Mr. Potato Head’s telephone bills, a glass hat, and Stalin’s mustache. Burden is also fond of written sound effects and incorporates onomatopoeic words such as “bzzzz,” “boosh,” and “splat” into the artwork, often emphasizing them with bold letters, shadows, and jagged lines.

The characters in Flaming Carrot take themselves seriously, which contributes to the series’ comedy. There are many furrowed brows, piercing eyes, and gesticulating arms. The Flaming Carrot himself is frequently drawn with his arms out from his sides, his knees bent, and his head slightly hunched, as if he is getting ready to spring to action.

Burden’s backgrounds frequently portray Shanty Town and working-class urban landscapes. Many of the frames depict factories, boarded warehouses, and greasy-spoon restaurants. Burden does not want readers to forget that Flaming Carrot is the people’s hero. The mundaneness of the scenery also reminds readers that even in this fantastical world of the deluded “superhero,” the “real world” still remains in the background.

Burden is playful and creative with the panels. In one instance, a character shoots through a panel, killing a character inside its frame. In another, the bottom of the Flaming Carrot’s mask pierces one of the panels below him.

Themes

The Flaming Carrot is inspired by the title character of Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605, 1615; English translation, 1612-1620). In Miguel de Cervantes’s classic work, Don Quixote’s mind becomes addled by reading too many books of chivalry; the Flaming Carrot is reduced to stupidity by reading more than five thousand comics. Like Don Quixote, the Flaming Carrot series is a cautionary tale about the dangers of getting too absorbed in a fictional world. This is a contradictory message for a comic book, and Burden plays with this paradox throughout the series.

In the world of Flaming Carrot Comics, life imitates art and not vice versa. Comics addict and journalist Radzak Zokey begins writing a story about the Flaming Carrot and alien invaders after reading about the Flaming Carrot in a comic book. His editor refuses to print his story; however, a few days later, when aliens begin taking over Iron City, the irate editor yells at Zokey, “These aliens are all over now! See what you started with your silly comic-book stories!” The narrative implies that by writing something, one can will it to happen. At times, the characters are aware that they are in a comic book and frequently mention the writer’s name. When the Flaming Carrot muses about the identity of the Artless Dodger, he conjectures that the character came out of the mind of Burden. Thus, the series has a self-reflexive quality that could be described as postmodern.

The Flaming Carrot is the ultimate antisuperhero. Burden subverts nearly every superhero cliché in creating the character. Like Batman, the Flaming Carrot carries a utility belt, but unlike Batman, the Carrot’s belt is full of useless sundry items such as PEZ dispensers, Silly Putty, and stink bombs that he somehow manages to turn into weapons. Unlike more conventional superheroes, the Carrot is not gentlemanly or a fair fighter, and he does not hesitate to shoot or otherwise injure his foes.

Impact

Flaming Carrot Comics is credited as the first surrealist comic book series. It is distinctly postmodern in the way it critiques its own message. Surrealism and postmodernism are relatively rare in comic books, and Burden is one of the few creators to venture into this territory. He helped make surrealism accessible, even popular. Despite its experimental nature, Flaming Carrot is mainstream enough that it appeared as the answer to a Jeopardy! question.

Flaming Carrot Comics is also one of the most popular comic book parodies. The Flaming Carrot is on equal footing with other favorite spoof characters such as Cerebus and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, with whom he has appeared in numerous crossovers. Flaming Carrot Comics has been nominated for several Eisner Awards, including Best Continuing Series and Best Humor Publication, which it won in 2007.

Flaming Carrot has a significant cult following, and there are many fan Web sites dedicated to the character, including some with instructions on how to make a Flaming Carrot costume. The Mystery Men have also made cameo appearances in several comics, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and been featured intheir own series, Bob Burden’s Original Mysterymen (1999), published by Dark Horse.

Films

Mystery Men. Directed by Kinka Usher. Universal Pictures, 1999. This comedy film is based on a feature in Flaming Carrot,although the Flaming Carrot himself does not appear as a character. The film stars Ben Stiller, Eddie Izzard, Janeane Garofalo, and Tom Waits and features a screenplay written by Neil Cuthbert. Although the film performed poorly at the box office, it eventually garnered a cult following, much like the comic series upon which it is based.

Further Reading

Gerber, Steve, et al. Howard the Duck (1973-1978).

Laird, Peter, and Kevin Eastman. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1984-1993).

Sim, Dave. Cerebus (1977-2004).

Bibliography

Davisson, Zack. “This Flame, This Carrot.” Comics Bulletin. December 1, 2010. http://www.comicsbulletin.com/grind/129126934663262.htm.

Rabin, Nathan. “My Year of Flops Case File 24 Mystery Men.” A.V. Club, April 17, 2007. http://www.avclub.com/articles/my-year-of-flops-case-file-24-mystery-men,15144.

Sim, Dave. Introduction to Flaming Carrot ComicsPresents Flaming Carrot, Man of Mystery!Milwaukie, Ore.: Dark Horse Comics, 2008.