Comments on: Strange superhero Flaming Carrot goes digital

By: mr_mediocre

mr_mediocre — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 17:53:00 +0000

Great timing on the article! Bob Burden was an artist guest at Dragon*Con and I got to meet him on Monday. Picked up a trade paperback of FC #1-4 (Image comics series, apparently #33-37 of the original series) which Bob happily autographed on the spot.

By: Tim Duncan

Tim Duncan — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 22:55:00 +0000

Absolutely love the movie! It may have very little to do with its inspiration but a movie “full of great moments and actors” is a great movie!

By: wibbled_pig

wibbled_pig — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 08:50:00 +0000

It’s a horrible movie, with some funny moments, I remember that I got to go see it for free, and they gave me a hugely oversized shoveler T-shirt that my gf uses to sleep sometimes (hell it looked like a dress on me).

By: John K Goodman

John K Goodman — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 06:02:00 +0000

same here, re: Cerebus, although the key word there is “loved” in the past tense, once Sim started losing his marbles it was all downhill from there

By: Thad Boyd

Thad Boyd — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 05:27:00 +0000

I remember enjoying the hell out of it, but I haven’t seen it in probably a decade. I am willing to concede the possibility that it is “a terrible, terrible film full of great moments and actors”.

By: Thad Boyd

Thad Boyd — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 05:25:00 +0000

There are new Nexus stories appearing in Dark Horse Presents. I’m not crazy about the coloring (too many gradients) but other than that I’m enjoying it.

Met Steve Rude a couple times. He was a nice guy.

By: Thad Boyd

Thad Boyd — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 05:23:00 +0000

That was my introduction to the Flaming Carrot.

They fought the Evil Umpires!

If I recall correctly, they were vampire umpires.

By: Thad Boyd

Thad Boyd — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 05:22:00 +0000

Hm, is that a reprint of the stories from Dark Horse Presents? I’m betting it is.

(I picked up a Beasts of Burden one-shot a couple weeks ago and was disappointed to find it was a collection of 3 stories I’d already read. But seriously, Dark Horse Presents is awesome.)

By: baronkarza

baronkarza — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 04:34:00 +0000

Actually, just a few weeks ago I had the pleasure of picking up a Concrete one-shot comic, “Three Uneasy Pieces,” from Dark Horse at my local comics shop. It had 3 short stories that move the Concrete story forward a bit, and it was pretty good.

Maybe you’d rather fight a flying dead dog with a jellybean for an eye? I LOVE Flaming Carrot. Much more unpredictable and weird than The Tick!

By: ChurchHatesTucker

ChurchHatesTucker — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 01:26:00 +0000

No mention of Badger?

By: tsol

tsol — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 00:58:00 +0000

Flaming Carrot and Nexus are up there with the best that comics has ever produced. Add David Boswell’s Reid Fleming, World’s Toughest Mailman to the list.

By: JohnnyAstro

JohnnyAstro — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 23:41:00 +0000

Loved all the comics you mentioned, but I stopped by to declare my undying love of the Mystery Men movie. I have a feeling there are a few other boingers who love it too.

By: Glenn Fleishman

Glenn Fleishman — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 22:48:00 +0000

Good point on Nexus: he had all the trappings of a superhero without any the motivations of one. The costume, the mission, the powers, the back story, but absolutely didn’t want to kill anyone (at least Hellpop).

Part of what I liked is that the alleged killers often had perfectly plausible explanations that the comic didn’t sort out. Recall the three Nexus sisters and the nurse who did mercy killings, for instance. Was he guilty? Well, the Merk decided he was.

By: Nadreck

Nadreck — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 22:30:00 +0000

Loved “Flaming Carrot” and my copy of #1, “Martian Roadhogs” is one of the favourite items in my collection. ”See Statues Slamdance to Destruction!”.

At a Niagara Falls con (Contraption?) there was a guy with a fully functional Flaming Carrot costume. They wouldn’t let him light the sterno flame on the top indoors because it would set off the sprinklers but we tried it out in the parking lot and it was awesome.

The thing about “Nexus” was that he very definitely *wasn’t* a superhero. What he had to do was assassinate murderers whose identities and crimes came to him in dreams that increased in intensity up to the point of lethality until he bumped them off.

“Good old Doctor Jip! He’s really quite a pip!
He experimented on the demented
And let their organs drip!”

There was an incredible, mostly non-human, supporting cast of aliens, demons, gods, disembodied heads and machines in the Nexus-verse all written by Mike Baron and drawn by Steve Rude. Easily the equal of any of the mainstream comics in art and story and far more adult than most of them. Very hard to collect as it jump from sinking comic company to sinking comic company with great irregularity but I have a tonne of them including the black-and-white “Capitol Comics” magazine sized edition with the flexi-disc record insert.

By: sean

sean — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 21:44:00 +0000

“I like my food piping hot!” {taste} “Yow! Too hot!”

By: efergus3

efergus3 — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 21:25:00 +0000

And from the infamous I-Mockery in plenty of time for Halloween we have: http://www.i-mockery.com/shorts/flamingcarrot/default.php

By: Snig

Snig — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 20:30:00 +0000

This was the emblematic cover for me:
http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/0/4/21904-3383-24444-1-flaming-carrot-comic_super.jpg

By: Snig

Snig — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 20:29:00 +0000

Actually quite a few curvy girls and some of FC’s best friends wear spandex.

By: Sparg

Sparg — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 20:16:00 +0000

Thanks for the reminder of Nexus. I had forgotten all about that book. I have a stack of those packed away somewhere in my basement.

By: Andy Simmons

Andy Simmons — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 20:02:00 +0000

I loved The Flaming Carrot through my comic-collecting years. As an adult, I’ve gotten rid of a lot of the trappings of youth, but my FC comics collection remains complete. I’ve got all of the collected volumes that have been released to date, but something tells me that I’ll be chipping in for the champagne edition before the day is out.

By: Preston Sturges

Preston Sturges — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 18:54:00 +0000

As you get older, misplacing your reading glasses leads to all sorts of humorous malaprops, like the League of Super Herpes.

By: Avram Grumer

Avram Grumer — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 17:59:00 +0000

The 1980s were an amazing sort of Precambrian Explosion of comics creativity, pretty much all of it taking place in weird little black-and-white indie comics that the general public never even knew existed. I somehow never got into Flaming Carrot, even though it was published by Aardvark-Vanaheim, home of Cerebus, which I loved more than any other comic ever.

By: Glenn Fleishman

Glenn Fleishman — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 17:25:00 +0000

Retconned! Thank you.

By: SomeGuyNamedMark

SomeGuyNamedMark — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 17:17:00 +0000

He said one day “I’m sick of spandex clad muscle men and giant breasted woman comics. That’s it, I’m going to make a carrot a super hero just to f with them.”

By: Thad Boyd

Thad Boyd — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 17:01:00 +0000

Horse.

(Pedantic corrections department: it’s The Wild Shall Wild Remain.)

Anyway. Great to hear Burden’s back at it. I’ve been a fan since FC’s first teamup with the Ninja Turtles; I think I cleaned out the back issue stock at Atomic Comics in the late 1990′s.

By: Bionicrat

Bionicrat — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 16:59:00 +0000

I remember laughing my ass off at cross-over issue of Flaming Carrot that featured the TMNT. The plot was one of them had amnesia and the FC adopted him as a sidekick with a paper bag for a mask. At least teenage-me thought it was funny, not sure how it would hold up today.

By: Timothy Krause

Timothy Krause — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 16:56:00 +0000

w00t, Concrete had a baby? Wow. Need to check up on that.

Great heady vibes with the Flaming Concrete Nexus Carrot. Memories of Steve Rude’s linework. Happy.

By: tonbo0422

tonbo0422 — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 16:31:00 +0000

Don’t forget Steve Purcell’s Sam & Max: Freelance Police! That was hilarious. And I WAS STEVE’S EDITOR AT OUR COLLEGE NEWSPAPER! I actually got to watch him draw the thing, and commission my own illustrations from him!

If you haven’t ever seen it, LOOK IT UP. I can’t believe Steve never took off like Mike Mignola, ANOTHER OF MY GOOD PALS AT CCAC.

Someday, YOU WILL REMEMBER MY NAME. Just not today.

By: chris jimson

chris jimson — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 16:31:00 +0000

I loved Flaming Carrot’s sometime sidekick Screwball, whose “super power” seemed to be the ability to wield a Ronco Pocket Fisherman like Indiana Jones did a whip or Spiderman did with his webbing.

Also, when wounded his insides appeared to be made of shredded wheat, “pure moral fiber” as the Flaming Carrot called it.

By: signsofrain

signsofrain — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 16:25:00 +0000

*WARNING CONCRETE SPOILERS*
Concrete by Paul Chadwick is really, REALLY good comics. The trade paperbacks are essential reading for anyone who collects graphic novels or comics. You know what’d be a great Boing Boing feature? Track down Paul Chadwick and ask him what’s going on with Concrete. I’ve been waiting YEARS to find out what happens with Concrete’s baby. I’ve queried Mr. Chadwick by email several times and never received a reply. I think his wife was seriously ill so no surprise he’s not answering every e-mail that comes his way but… I’d love to get some fresh info on the topic. I think the most recent thing I heard was that he was working on several short Concrete stories and even a Concrete novel (text, not comics!) but that info was from back in 2010.