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dantastic's review against another edition
3.0
Flaming Carrot Comics Omnibus #1 collects Flaming Carrot 1-2, 4-11, and 25-27.
Untold eons ago, shortly after the oceans drank Atlantis, I found an issue of The Flaming Carrot at the flea market for a quarter. It was crazy shit but the Flaming Carrot is not an easy super hero to pin down. Once I saw this was in the works, I immediately pre-ordered it.
The Flaming Carrot is a nutjob who wears a giant carrot on his head and fights crime. In this particular volume, he takes on a vast communist conspiracy, a scientist who makes bombs out of extracted cellulite, the League of Umpires, zombies, the still animated disembodied head of Frankenstein's Monster, and teams up with the Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles.
The series evolves quite a bit over the course of the volume. The stories feel like loosely linked Monty Python sketches after first and gradually change into something more coherent, more cohesively linked.
The Carrot feels like a low key Deadpool most of the time, subtly joking his way through adventures. '80s pop culture references abound, making the book feel dated, although still fun. Bob Burden's artwork comes a long way during this volume, feeling amateurish at first but feeling quite a bit more polished toward the end. It feels like a loveletter to 60s and 70s comics at times but also feels like a parody. I think Bob Burden probably had a lot of conflicting feels about super hero comics and The Flaming Carrot is his way of expressing them.
While Flaming Carrot Comics Omnibus #1 isn't my favorite '80s indie comic omnibus, it feels like the spiritual ancestor of both The Tick and Deadpool at times. I'm on board for future Flaming Carrot omnibuses if Dark Horse chooses to publish them. 3 out of 5 heads of Frankenstein.
Untold eons ago, shortly after the oceans drank Atlantis, I found an issue of The Flaming Carrot at the flea market for a quarter. It was crazy shit but the Flaming Carrot is not an easy super hero to pin down. Once I saw this was in the works, I immediately pre-ordered it.
The Flaming Carrot is a nutjob who wears a giant carrot on his head and fights crime. In this particular volume, he takes on a vast communist conspiracy, a scientist who makes bombs out of extracted cellulite, the League of Umpires, zombies, the still animated disembodied head of Frankenstein's Monster, and teams up with the Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles.
The series evolves quite a bit over the course of the volume. The stories feel like loosely linked Monty Python sketches after first and gradually change into something more coherent, more cohesively linked.
The Carrot feels like a low key Deadpool most of the time, subtly joking his way through adventures. '80s pop culture references abound, making the book feel dated, although still fun. Bob Burden's artwork comes a long way during this volume, feeling amateurish at first but feeling quite a bit more polished toward the end. It feels like a loveletter to 60s and 70s comics at times but also feels like a parody. I think Bob Burden probably had a lot of conflicting feels about super hero comics and The Flaming Carrot is his way of expressing them.
While Flaming Carrot Comics Omnibus #1 isn't my favorite '80s indie comic omnibus, it feels like the spiritual ancestor of both The Tick and Deadpool at times. I'm on board for future Flaming Carrot omnibuses if Dark Horse chooses to publish them. 3 out of 5 heads of Frankenstein.
helpfulsnowman's review against another edition
3.0
The Flaming Carrot is a man who sat and read 5,000 comics back to back and got brain damage. And became a hero. Of sorts.
The things in Flaming Carrot are fun. The governor's head gets turned into a baby's head. A man makes bombs out of cellulite. Death takes a break, and because he can't use his powers but needs to get involved in a bar fight, and because he's 76 times stronger than a normal man, he shrinks himself to 1/76th the size and runs into the fray. "Specific gravity" is mentioned in reference to why this works. I was ALMOST tricked into looking that up before I remembered that life is finite and I'd be looking something up to find out that a completely preposterous scenario was not scientifically sound.
But maybe 2/3 through, it gets a little goobledigooked and it's too much like a dream, which I was told by an excellent writing teacher could mean anything. "It could be a snake rolling a donut down a hole."
So points for originality, and it's fun for a bit. But maybe it overstays its welcome. Ben Franklin said guests smell fucked up and fishy after about 400 pages of madcap comics nonsense. We'd be wise to listen to our first president.
The things in Flaming Carrot are fun. The governor's head gets turned into a baby's head. A man makes bombs out of cellulite. Death takes a break, and because he can't use his powers but needs to get involved in a bar fight, and because he's 76 times stronger than a normal man, he shrinks himself to 1/76th the size and runs into the fray. "Specific gravity" is mentioned in reference to why this works. I was ALMOST tricked into looking that up before I remembered that life is finite and I'd be looking something up to find out that a completely preposterous scenario was not scientifically sound.
But maybe 2/3 through, it gets a little goobledigooked and it's too much like a dream, which I was told by an excellent writing teacher could mean anything. "It could be a snake rolling a donut down a hole."
So points for originality, and it's fun for a bit. But maybe it overstays its welcome. Ben Franklin said guests smell fucked up and fishy after about 400 pages of madcap comics nonsense. We'd be wise to listen to our first president.
niche's review against another edition
2.0
I'd picked this up after hearing it was the basis for the superhero comedy Mystery Men. There were a few superhero names that were the same but otherwise not much in common. The protagonist, the Flaming Carrot, has stream of conscious madlib style humor that reminded me of Axe Cop but didn't land with me. It has an underground comics vibe where it feels like part of the story is an inside joke with the author. Narrative-wise it bounces between absurd and surreal, hero punching bad guys, and occasionally being somber with each story being fairly stand-alone with the exception of a mad scientist collecting cellulite from obese women to use as a bomb running around in the background for multiple issues.
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