The Mirthful Man Behind the Mystery Men
By Dan Brown It was August 6, 1999, when Mystery Men was released in movie theatres. As a superhero parody, I believe it stands the test of time all these years – and superhero movies – later. The idea of celebrating a motion picture’s 27th anniversary may seem absurd because journalists are supposed to write stories on the big anniversaries of a film’s debut, like the 10th, the 25th, the 50th – not a nonsensical one like No. 27. But if there’s one person who would appreciate the randomness of a 27th anniversary column, it’s the guy who created the Mystery Men, Bob Burden. I’ll be absolutely candid up front: I can’t, in a column like this, possibly do justice to Burden’s eccentric sense of humour – either in his comics, or in real life. His wit is so sardonic it approaches the poetic. I’ve interviewed him only once, when I was an arts writer at the National Post and did an explainer on the Mystery Men – the B-list comic characters who inspired the movie. “My life goes between total undisciplined mayhem and the discipline of a surgeon having his brow wiped as he’s in the 11th hour of a very touchy operation,” he told me over the phone from Atlanta. Maybe you recall Mystery Men. If not, let me refresh your memory: It stars a group of working-class schmoes who aren’t ready for the superhero big time. They don’t belong in the MCU or the DCU or any other respectable universe. They include the Bowler (Janeane Garofalo), who tosses a mystical bowling bowl with her father’s skull embedded in it. The Shoveler (William H. Macy) is armed with King Arthur’s shovel. The Spleen (Paul Reubens) has only one power: Being able to generate really toxic farts. And Mr. Furious (Ben Stiler) is able to get . . . really angry. They were a direct contrast to glamorous characters who had made the transition to the big screen by the late 1990s, like Batman and Superman. My favourite of the lot was their mentor, the Sphinx, who spoke in aphorisms like: * “He who questions training only trains himself at asking questions.” * “When you can balance a tack hammer on your head, you will head off your foes with a balanced attack.” * “When you care what is outside, what is inside cares for you.” * “You must be like wolf pack, not six pack.” Burden co-wrote the Mystery Men script, infusing the dialogue with his skewed humour. As funny as the picture still is, though, it doesn’t compare to the comics. There are only four issues of the title (which is officially Mysterymen, not Mystery Men, like the movie title). If you really want to understand his characters, and Burden’s ironic view of the world, it’s worth your while to hunt them down. In fact, the very best way to experience Burden’s storytelling is to find the title where the the less-than-super team originally debuted, Flaming Carrot Comics. Burden created Flaming Carrot long before the Mystery Men. That’s where they first appeared, then were spun off from the Carrot’s adventures and seized upon by Hollywood. As the name suggests, Flaming Carrot is a crackpot superhero with a huge carrot mask that has a flame on top. He became simple-minded after his brain was damaged from reading 5,000 comics in one sitting, which means his solution to most situations is to shoot everyone in sight. In their first adventure together, Flaming Carrot teams up with the Mystery Men to fight an army of Nazi boots cloned from the feet of Hitler. I asked Burden where he got the idea for a hero disguised by a giant carrot mask: “It was probably the dumbest idea anybody’s ever come up with for a comic character, so I said, ‘Let’s run with it.’” I was also curious back then about how much of his own personality comes through in Flaming Carrot. “That’s something that a lot of people ask, and I would ask, ‘How much of Flaming Carrot is potentially in all of us?’ I think we all need to go wandering with no direction some day on a sunny afternoon like a baby with his diaper falling off.” That, my friends is Bob Burden in a nutshell. If you dig square superheroes like the Avengers or the Justice League, Mystery Men won’t be your cup of tea. But if you’re in the mood for taking a walk off the beaten path, check them out! Let me know in the comments if you’ve seen Mystery Men. Do you agree it stands up as a spoof of the superhero genre? Is there one you think is better? Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
R2-D2 and C-3PO Never Did This
By Dan BrownA bunch of robots walk into a bar, but they aren’t the strangest thing about the place.That’s the premise of Robot Comics No. 0, which Bob Burden – famed in comic circles for creating Flaming Carrot and the Mysterymen – published in 1987 as a one-off “cultural oddity,” to use the eccentric creator’s own words.The book describes one crazy night down at the Blind Pig, a bar where a mummy plays banjo in the corner, two guys with axes for heads scuffle, scuba divers float through the air, beans spill out of the pay-phone receiver, and a man walks by, carrying a tombstone in anticipation of his own imminent demise.Welcome to Bob Burden’s imagination. If you’ve ever had a frantic bout of drinking at a dive that didn’t make sense to you in the morning, yet was still a lot of fun, you’ll be able to relate. The whole thing plays like an extended scene out of a Flaming Carrot comic, and indeed, Carrot supporting players like Uncle Billy and the Artless Dodger are part of the watering hole’s crowd.Those readers with long memories and unconventional tastes know Flaming Carrot (and his sometime allies, the Mysterymen) as the blue-collar hero whose mask is, well, a flaming carrot. His secret origin: After reading 5,000 comics in one sitting, the poor wretch suffers brain damage, becoming Palookaville’s B-list protector in the process.So if you’ve read any of the Carrot’s irregularly published exploits, you will grok what Robot Comics No. 0 is all about.As with all of Burden’s work, this slender volume is a riot of invention. This bar could only have come from his fertile, twisted mind, and I was lucky enough to find a copy in the bargain bin at L.A. Mood just before the summer.The surreal comic makes for engrossing reading on a muggy August afternoon.By way of introduction, Burden says he composed the tale decades prior to its publication as an exercise in what he calls “electra-fiction.” The artist/writer says the panels “exploded on the pages with no bounds of reason or any attempt to conform to known standards. It is, in essence, experimental literature guised as a leaking barrelful of rip-snorting, foot-stomping belly laffs.”I call it the cartoon equivalent of jazz. Or a nonsensical salad stocked with one random ingredient after the other.There is no plot, no A to B story, just a profile of an unforgettable night in a drinking establishment whose existence defies logic.If you’re a fan or student of tavern-derived literature, you could also classify it as Burden’s answer to the classic New Yorker piece by Joseph Mitchell, McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon.Indeed, the evening’s events are narrated by a nameless reporter who figures, “As a journalist and an artist, I ought to record it all for posterity.”What does he observe? Harry Lime, from the Third Man, appears in one panel in all his Wellesian glory. The house band’s cover of Neil Diamond’s Cracklin’ Rosie upsets a patron. One of the bar’s many denizens refers to two of the Three Stooges. And then the female (?) robot leaves in the company of a Maytag repairman. Of course, several bodies are buried at the local drive-in theatre following the night’s mayhem.If all of that sounds like your kind of madness, it’s worth hunting down this little-known Bob Burden creation.No wonder his motto is “The wild shall wild remain!”Dan Brown has covered pop culture for 30 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
