Flaming Carrot:
Man of Mystery

by Bob Burden
(Dark Horse, 1997)

For the uninitiated, Flaming Carrot Comics is about, well, this guy in a six-foot-long carrot mask who, er, uh, well, heehee, gosh, he's K-RAZY MAN!!

Flaming Carrot is this superhero who fights crime without superpowers or a secret identity or any visible means of support in a burned-out industrial city and with a dulled razor wit. He fights nutcases like Garbagemouth and pigmies who are building a giant ear. He battles them with stink bombs and a baloney gun. Example: Caption: Garbagemouth's flying buzz saw blades are not very accurate, but highly dangerous! Flaming Carrot's baloney gun's accurate, but...

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" laughs Garbagemouth as he is slapped in the face with baloney slices.

And he takes beautiful women who are irresistibly drawn to his animal, er, vegetable magnetism on a first date to his girlfriend's house for dinner!?!

His wildly satiric, dadaistic stories sometimes forget to have a plot, are loaded with popular culture in-jokes, and Flaming Carrot likes to say "ut." You'll like to say it, too.

Yep, there is no one like Flaming Carrot. And FC does it all drawn in a scratchy style with a barely functional understanding of the fundamentals of anatomy and perspective and stuff. And yet this title would simply not work if drawn by anyone else. Bob Burden's delightful art is the exception to all art rules. There is nothing like Flaming Carrot Comics, and thank god that its long absence from the marketplace is finally over!!

Anything by Bob Burden (including his wonderful Mystery Men Comics, upon which the movie was based) is highly recommended for teens and adults. Preteens simply wouldn't understand. Ut!

- Rambles
written by Michael Vance
published 7 May 2005



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