REAL GENIUS

FLAMING CARROT COMICS #4
Written and Drawn by Bob Burden
Published by Image Comics

Few things make me more pleased than a new issue of FLAMING CARROT. Bob Burden’s long-running absurdist masterpiece is like nothing else you’ll find on the racks, full of ludicrous stories, silly art, and tons of laughs. Yet what makes it work is that all the nonsense… makes complete and total sense.

For example, this issue finds the Carrot having entered into a “zen stupidity” state of mind to help him fight crime. And in this state, he takes a bath, promptly loses his ducky soap out an open window, and winds up on an adventure. The adventure takes him through the city streets, first in search of his ducky soap, and then in search of his friend Sponge Boy, who owes him $400 (which the Carrot allows will help him buy new ducky soap. The search for Sponge Boy takes him to a strip club and to a haunted house, wherein he accidentally falls into a realm where he becomes real (and the art turns into photographs). And to top it off, he does the entire thing in his pajamas, and has a pie fight with the two coeds he lives with to start the story.

If you’re thinking that sounds insane, you’re perfectly right. But that’s what makes the CARROT such a terrific piece of work. In Burden’s world, it all makes perfect, unarguable sense. You’re so sucked into the lunacy of the characters that you can’t help but start thinking like them a bit. It’s almost enough to put you in therapy.

FLAMING CARROT most certainly isn’t for everyone. Some readers need a coldly logical and linear narrative to enjoy a comic, and this most assuredly would leave them sucking their thumbs and looking for a happy place. But for those with a taste for the different and unusual, I heartily recommend getting your proper dose of vitamins and minerals through this tasty vegetable.

/Mason