In the mid-1980s a friend introduced me to a character rightly called "The World's First Surrealist Superhero," otherwise known as the Flaming Carrot. The Carrot, loopy brainchild of artist Bob Burden, was drawn in black and white, ran a crappy laundromat, packed heat and nonsequiturs; in other words, he was a refreshing departure from other superheroes.
If you know the film Mystery Men, you know some of Bob Burden's other superheroes, odd birds all, such as The Shoveler, Mr. Furious, and The Bowler. Flaming Carrot didn't make it into that film for obvious reasons, being too surreal for the big screen.
Life has been changing for me fast lately, and last night I noticed a panel from an early issue of Flaming Carrot Comics that I scanned and put on my refrigerator door a long time ago. Funny how those things you see every day become invisible, but then become visible again at the right moment. Though I'm slightly less surreal than the Carrot, the coin toss turned out the same way for me, and I'm going to keep trusting it.
(click on image for larger, weirder)
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