Bob Burden: Celebrating 25 Years of The Carrot

By Mike Jozic

I’ve been in contact with Bob Burden off-and-on now for the last year and a half and when I received an e-mail from him the other day saying something to the effect of, “working on a new FC and coming down the home stretch. Should have an ash can by San Diego. Going to be celebrating 25th anniversary this year so how about doing something small right here before SD,” I found myself powerless to refuse the lure of the Carrot – not to mention the chance to get a sneak peek at some of Bob’s upcoming projects!

And, really, celebrating the 25th anniversary of a character like the Flaming Carrot is a huge milestone, especially in this industry where a book loses it’s creative team after 2 issues, then gets cancelled after 2 more. And those are the big company characters! The Carrot is a true original, independent and has remained in print (in one form or another) for a quarter century this year.

What follows is a quick dialogue between Bob and myself covering his plans for the surreal vegetable-headed hero’s silver anniversary, the dish on some of his new projects, and the answer to what the heck he’s been doing between Flaming Carrot projects.

Ut!

MIKE JOZIC: You're celebrating the 25th anniversary of Flaming Carrot Comics this year. What do you have planned to celebrate this special occasion?

BOB BURDEN: We’re kicking it all off at the San Diego Con this summer and I’m going to do it up. I decided to spring for a booth this time and I’ll be there in full force. These last few years San Diego has been an “easy listening” con for me, you know, a table in artist alley and just taking it easy and enjoying the con.

JOZIC: You didn’t announce it at the beginning of the year? Why wait till now?

BURDEN: Well, we’re doing our 25th anniversary fiscally. We’re running it from this year’s San Diego Con, all the way to next summer’s convention season.

JOZIC: That’s some plan.

BURDEN: Not really a plan. I got a little behind on announcing it, so… We will definitely have a couple of comics out this year though.

JOZIC: Why the overlap, rather than running it from January to December?

BURDEN: I guess,,, because we can. You see… with Flaming Carrot, you can do almost anything. I’m glad he’s on our side, eh?

Seriously? Why not? More fun for everyone, even though I know it’s highly irregular.

JOZIC: You mentioned there will be new material from you this year. Is it too much to hope for some brand spanking new Flaming Carrot comics?

BURDEN: Yes, and I actually just finished the first one - just in time for San Diego. And I drew it all. It’s being scanned right now as we speak. I’ll have it there for all to see at the con.

JOZIC: So, is this the start of a new regular series?

BURDEN: Sort of. I’m planning two or three new issues of Flaming Carrot in the next year, a second volume of Thrilling Visions, the sketchbook I put out a few years back, and I’m going to try and squeeze another Invincible Man comic out.

JOZIC: Is it going to be the same old Carrot?

BURDEN: He wears blue pants for the first 15 pages, but you can’t tell because it’s in B&W.

Actually, there is a change. I’m going back to the Flaming Carrot that’s more simple, more blunt, more picaresque. People commented that FC was becoming more intelligent and coherent over the years. Well, that’s no good. But I’d never noticed. I went back and looked. Sure enough, he was sort of becoming more of a Seinfeld than a Kramer. So in this issue he’s just like his old self in this new story. We’ll have a scene where you see him go “zen stupid”. It’s a state of mind he needs to commit all the daring and wild stunts he pulls off. I made a conscious effort to keep him stupid.

Also, we’re sticking to the old numbering system.

JOZIC: What’s the story going to be about?

BURDEN: Flaming Carrot tries to be more politically correct because he’s getting bad press. He tries to be good but things backfire on him. This issue has a villain called Garbagemouth. Every second word out of Garbagemouth is @#$%* or *&#%!$. He’s a mean, old, irritable, foul-mouthed freak. A great villain, but he gets killed in the first few pages. Then there’s a singing Zombie named Bambo who was Garbagemouth’s henchman. He takes Flaming Carrot as his new master since Flaming Carrot was the one who killed his old master. There are some pygmies out in the woods, building a giant ear from French bread.

Also Flaming Carrot has a date with a two-headed woman, a famous hot actress, a real big, legendary star like Madonna or Grace Jones. She’s in Iron City for a film festival and Flaming Carrot is selected by the city fathers to be her escort for the evening and help guard her. But the pygmies kidnap her.

JOZIC: For those cloth-eared nincompoops who may not know already, how was it that the Carrot came to be 25 years ago? What was the creative impulse at work there?

BURDEN: I wanted to tell a story and I wanted to have some fun too. I also wanted to be new, fresh and maybe a little revolutionary. I wasn’t a good enough artist to take on a real serious concept. Today I could. Not because I’m a better artist, but because there’s a lot more leeway for American Primitives. But I could never draw like Frank Frazetta or Neal Adams. Takes too much time. And you’ve already got Dave Stevens and Mark Shultz.

Creatively I was going for a new frontier. Experimenting. Going buck wild writing and drawing. And fandom accepted The Carrot, non-Marvel-style art and all.

JOZIC: Was there any resistance to the surreal nature of the book?

BURDEN: 25 years ago, when I started out doing the Carrot, comic readers - the people in comics fandom, - were just beginning to take themselves seriously, to find an identity. Flaming Carrot was a funny comic and we, ironically, ran into a roadblock. They were touchy because we were perceived as making fun of comics. I just wanted to have some fun - not make fun - and we eventually got that across. Fandom eventually picked up on it.

Creatively I wanted to just go overboard… go wild, fly…. I wanted to get noticed. Get noticed fast and get up and running quick, before the book died on the vine. I was like, “Hey, here I am! Let’s have some fun! Let’s party!”

There had been “fun” comics before, like Fighting American and Herbie, but, at first, they didn’t see that Flaming Carrot was in the same tradition. I guess we’ve coined a genre here: “fun comics”, as opposed to humor comics or satire?

JOZIC: Flaming Carrot was never intended as a satire.

BURDEN: It was a little camp, but never satire. I never wanted to do satire, you know, Mad Magazine stuff, so the stories had to be strong, to stand on their own. Thus Flaming Carrot became something totally different from all the humor comics around then.

JOZIC: How has Flaming carrot changed, and how has it changed you over the years?

BURDEN: Hmmm. I was another person entirely then. I remember that “person-that-I-was” with fondness, envy, embarrassment, wonder and amusement. But it was a world that will never be like that for me again. Do I miss being him? No. I think that someone that doesn’t change, or at least evolve, is… sad.

I learned a great deal about storytelling, and did it the best way; all in the saddle. I learned by doing.

In the last few years I’ve gone back and studied writing. I’ve been reading the books and took some classes.

As for the character, he started out as a mysterious, surreal, superhero-like avatar and kept revealing himself to me, and hopefully the audience. In time, a whole world of bizarre characters and surreal experiences spilled out. The Carrot started out as a one trick pony and evolved into a very unique franchise.

JOZIC: You mentioned writing classes?

BURDEN: Yeah, The McKee course like the one in Adaptation. It was pretty surreal. His course and his book Story have been a lot of help to me. And it was Mystery Men that gave me the freedom to take a year or two off and learn writing.

JOZIC: Back in the summer of '79 when you created the Carrot, did you ever think to yourself that he would stand the test of time as he has?

BURDEN: No, and I’m not entirely sure he has. [laughs] In those days I was too busy spinning the plates to think of such things. And you don’t think about things like that when you’re young. I had no idea it would be around more than an issue or two. Then by the 5th or 6th issue, I got into the swing of it, things just kept going on and I was discovering a character there. The stories just kept coming. I was hooked.

JOZIC: And what’s the reason for such long absences between issues of Flaming Carrot? What have you been doing with yourself?

BURDEN: That I can’t talk about that yet - soon, though. Maybe when we talk again in the fall. There were a few years there where I couldn’t draw, but more on that later.

JOZIC: You’ve been living off the Mystery Men movie money?

BURDEN: That money doesn’t last forever. I was in a dry spell before it and had a lot of bills to pay. Fortunately I didn’t put it in the stock market. I got the money from the movie just in time to get wiped out too. I’ve done well enough to take the time off and learn screenwriting.

JOZIC: And has that paid off?

BURDEN: Yes. Amazing isn’t it? Just a few little tings here and there. But it just shows how starved they are for ideas out there. Nothing too big yet though, I’m still feeling my way cautiously. I’ve done a little rewrite work - nothing important - optioned a few things - wrote a few spec scripts, but nothing I care to announce yet. Don’t want to jinx it.

JOZIC: Are you still working on that front?

BURDEN: More than ever. I finally think I know what I’m doing. I wrote a number of scripts, including one for the Disc Man story in Mysterymen Comics #2 and one for the fourth issue, the All-Villain issue.

With the anniversary coming up this last year, I started on these issues of Flaming Carrot and put the other stuff on the shelf for a while. I figured I had a window of time with the anniversary, and the character was becoming more and more out of sight and out of mind. Also, I must admit that I was encouraged by the success of some things like Sock Monkey and The Goon.

At the same time, it’s been good to get back into it. From a writing standpoint, digging back into the comic has sort of “zapped the pram” and “rebuilt the desktop” for me, creatively speaking.

JOZIC: Where did the idea for the photo comic come from?

BURDEN: That’s right, I sent you the link. Very cool, huh?

JOZIC: Yeah, kind of cool and camp.

BURDEN: Sam Gaffin was doing a photo comic called The Anomalies. He does a real good job of putting it together and I was impressed. He does it all on a wing and a prayer and he has this cool troupe of actors, all these great, gung-ho people that act for him.

I was really excited when I saw what he was doing. I always wanted to do something like that but I heard it was pretty hard to do. Maybe it’s easier now with PhotoShop. Years ago they did a Freak Brothers story in photos. I asked Gilbert Shelton about it and he said it was the biggest pain in the ass.

I always encouraged Sam, and at one con, I mentioned that maybe we should do a crossover with Flaming Carrot - read between the lines: no drawing on my part. Well, he took me up on it and I’m glad he did. I just had to do it! He was planning on shooting it at DragonCon, and I tossed off a script last year, like the night before the con. I spent a couple of hours on the script, maybe. And then Sam ran with it. He did such a good job!

And it worked. I never imagined it would turn out as good as it did. I mean, there was no budget. I was really pleased - proud, actually. I think he’ll make a really good producer or director someday. He has a good eye for visual storytelling, lighting, blocking the shots. He actually fleshed the story out a lot and really ran with it. And ran in the right direction. I mean, you never know about someone who wants to spend all their spare time making a photo comic with a character like Flaming Carrot.

JOZIC: What was the process of putting the photo comic together? It looks like it was a tremendous amount of work, but it really paid off.

BURDEN: Sam’s a genius at putting something together on a shoestring. He gets all these wonderful, cool people to work with him. He’s a wizard with PhotoShop, which is part of his corporate day job. He really pumped on it.

JOZIC: How will the comic be distributed?

BURDEN: Not sure yet, but we may try and fit into the regular Flaming Carrot series. I think it’s good enough. I think we could do it in color. We’ll see how the first hand drawn issue does.

JOZIC: Am I seeing things, or is one of the Anomalies wearing Captain Amazing's suit from the Mystery Men movie?

BURDEN: No, I think it’s based on some old comic book character from Nedor or Fox.

JOZIC: There was actually a comic company named Nedor?

BURDEN: In the late ’40s, sure. Remember, I used to be a Golden-Age collector and dealer 20 years ago.

No, really the Anomalies are Sam’s creation.

JOZIC: Are you going to do more photo comics?

BURDEN: I plan to do more things with Sam. Maybe a photo comic with a simultaneous web movie. Gotta find the right project, though. Photo comics work with FC, but they may not fly with a more serious comic. I don’t think anyone would have bought a photo comic version of Bridges of Madison County or The English Patient.

Now if you crossed over English Patient with Flaming Carrot…

JOZIC: What other kinds of things are you working on now?

BURDEN: All over the board. Serious stories. Sad stories. And some fun stuff too. Check out dynamitegirl.net and mulletforce6.com. They’re the fun ones. Mullet Force Six is kind of like what the Mysterymen movie should have been.

JOZIC: Anything special planned for the con?

BURDEN: For mayhem? Fireworks, dancing girls, and giving away bags of money would be cool. As a publicity stunt I’m thinking of arriving at the show in a cocoon.

JOZIC: Why a cocoon?

BURDEN: I joked about arriving at the show in a cocoon back in the eighties, but maybe I’ll do it for real. Wouldn’t that be a good stunt?

Maybe next year for the big 25th finale. They could wheel me in like Hannibal Lecter, with luggage stickers and fanfare, music, cameras, and I’ll burst out of the cocoon in a tuxedo, give a speech and then sail off on roller skates. It’s just the kind of showmanship comics need, don’t you think? It will make quite a mess though.

JOZIC: Anything you want to say to your fans before signing off?

BURDEN: I’d tell them to keep enjoying life, keep the faith, and… brush after every meal.

Seriously, I want to say thanks for giving me a shot at my dream by you all buying the books all these years and I’m going to be doing my best to keep new and entertaining stories coming out one way or another.

	Mike Jozic has spent the last several years interviewing comic book creators and other entertainment related personalities for various publications. He has been published both online and in print, with his work appearing in The Comics Journal, FearsMag.com and Silver Bullet Comicbooks.

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