0066: He's The Utmost-- And The Most Ut!

I know it's been ages since I posted, and largely it's because I've been trying to update my have/want lists for comics. Numerous titles have been published since the last time I wrote out my booklet and integrating the titles alphabetically  seems like a lot of work, but ultimately not as much as flipping through a dog eared notebook trying to find titles randomly shoe-horned in after the fact on whatever page once had blank space relatively close to where they should go. But also because I'm lazy.

I've also been futzing with some new tech I've never needed to use before-- a camera. Specifically the one built into my laptop. So far, most of the items I've been profiling here have been objects flat enough to be captured by a scanner, or the packaging of those things that weren't. And since the purpose of the blog is to take account and/or stock of the items in my collection related to comics without actually being comics (or at least conventional comics- I've done a number of promo and PSA type stuff), I began repeatedly running up against three-dimensional items that I couldn't represent without swiping an image from online, something that I wanted  to avoid or minimize. For the record, on the few occasions that I do use an outside source (such as one of the several images I'll include today), I clearly describe it as such and provide readers with the source.

When the time came to test my editing skills, I didn't have to think twice about it. It had to be the guy who probably wouldn't even think once about it. He's that indefatigable man of action, bon vivant and malaprop, none other than Bob Burden's The Flaming Carrot!

 

This is an action figure made available by Dark Horse in 1999. It's being offered on eBay at the moment for $25-$35 and on Amazon for (I kid you not) $79.99 with the disclaimer that it "comes mint on the card but the bubble has been slit." Do you know what the professional term for that is? It's called "NOT mint on the card". A better way to phrase that might be, "figure and accessories in perfect condition, packaging compromised". That would put your best foot and not sound as though you're trying to misrepresent the item.

On a whim I went to the Dark Horse website (where I got the image below of the original package intact) and found that they are still offering it for $11.95. I don't know how many, if any, are left 20 years later, but you can check it out for yourself at: this page on the Dark Horse site.

This is the outside image I mentioned in the second paragraph.

You can't quite read all of the blurbs through the accessories, but I still have the original packaging myself, so I'll save you the eyestrain:

• "Works upside-down!"
• "Head lights up!" (this is true, keep reading)
• "Use only as directed!"
• "Real fake flaming action!"
• "World's first surrealistic superhero!"

The accessories are (on the left) his Nuclear-powered Pogo Stick and (on the right) his 9mm Radom automatic [this is way out of my wheelhouse, but it kind of looks like the Vis model and yes, unlike the pogo stick that is an actual Polish designed handgun] and two stink bombs. I've seen websites that have erroneously identified the stink bombs as grenades and the pogo stick as a grappling device, but all of the accessories appear in the "Secrets Of The Carrot!" pin-up from FLAMING CARROT COMICS ANNUAL #1 (01/97) and several places since, including two different trades. They're all clearly marked and described.

The back of the package was too big for my scanner, so I broke the image into sections.

The comics portion in the middle has a history. All of the panels were originally published in B&W and I suspect that this was their color debut. The first panel was drawn for the inside front cover of FLAMING CARROT COMICS #24 (04/90), seen below:

In this early version of the page, the other six panels come from a feature in issue #3 (03/84), published by Aardvark-Vanaheim before Dark Horse existed. Entitled "Flaming Carrot And His World" it consists of a full page splash and four pages that each have two large panels, one on top of the other.

In this B&W original, panels 2-3 made up page 2 of the 1984 story. Panels 4-5, in reverse order, made up page 3 of the story and panels 6-7, in that order, made up page 5. The splash and page 4 weren't used.

The color version obviously took only the panels from pages 2 and 5 from issue #3 and the introduction panel made for issue #24.

You can also find the whole B&W page in the third Dark Horse trade, "GREATEST HITS", even though the three trades are devoted to reprinting the pre-DH issues published by A-V and Renegade (1984-1987).

The action figure itself is pretty neat and although I don't really play with the figures I've bought since childhood I have posed the figure on various bookshelves and can attest to it having a certain degree of durability. It has 14 points of articulation, as follows:

1. (pivot) neck
2. (pivot) left shoulder
3. (hinge) left elbow
4. (pivot) left wrist
5. (pivot) right shoulder
6. (hinge) right elbow
7. (pivot) right wrist
8. (pivot) waist
9. (pivot) left hip
10. (hinge) left knee
11. (pivot) left ankle
12. (pivot) right hip
13. (hinge) right knee
14. (pivot) right ankle

That's not including the battery operated red light "flame", activated by twisting the clear plastic flame on top of his carrot mask/head. The battery still works; it's obviously not an alkaline battery since it hasn't leaked acid after all this time. My first attempt at getting a photo of the "lit" flame showed the limitations of the camera at lower fidelity settings:

I can get a sharper picture, but it reduces the overall effect:

Last but not least, no job is finished until the paperwork is done:

Should anyone come across a used, loose copy of the figure, you may want to consult this to replace the battery, because it's a really cool effect in person.

Well, now that I can post about solid objects, I'm not going to write off flat objects completely. But I am going to take advantage of this more often and try to think out of the box. Or at least think out of the blister pack.

0042: Insider Outlier

Most comics publishers who release more than two titles every month have some outlet for advertising that they return to regularly. Today, websites are ubiquitous even though 'in-house' ads (advertisements for a publisher's titles that appear in their other titles) are still around after 80 years. In the mid-60's both Marvel and DC decided to consolidate as much news about their current and imminent releases as could fit onto a single page which they would run in all their comics that month. Marvel's Bullpen Bulletins and DC's Direct Currents took on lives of their own, outliving changes in editors and even publishers. Since most larger publishers also did commissioned promotional pamphlets as a sideline, it was only a matter of time before they realized that they could present pitches to distributors and retailers in the form of comic book or magazine sized pamphlets. Eventually these would be printed in quantities that made them available to readers. Most were free, of course (Eclipse Extra, Comico Checklist, DC's Coming Attractions, etc.), but Marvel had the bright idea of selling its ads to its fans in the form of "Marvel Age". Initially half the length of a comic for less than half the price of their newsstand comics, it expanded to full length for the same reduced price after widespread criticism and ridicule, adding previews and interviews to make it more of a biased fanzine than an ad. That was all before Dark Horse Comics even existed.

Dark Horse began publishing in 1986 and right out of the gate [the first of many horse racing puns, so brace yourself] they began using plays on their name. The very first comic they published, DARK HORSE PRESENTS #1 opens with the editorial "And We're Off!" and ends with the letters' page "Winner's Circle" (starting with contributor bios for obvious reasons). With the second issue the editorial became "The Starting Gate" and as the company's roster grew, more pages were given over to in-house ads until #12 (11/87) devoted a page to blurbs for the most current issue of each of their titles. In #13, "Starting Gate" was gone and #14 contained a four page preview section. Increasingly, news became integrated into the letters' page(s). Then, DHP ran its first "Tip Sheet" page in #19 (07/88), a mostly text account of news about the company and upcoming releases. Over the years it's taken on several horse racing related titles; it currently uses "Horsepower" and I think the previous one was "Finish Line". But a year after introducing "Tip Sheet"  Dark Horse began publishing the magazine sized (8.5" X 11.0") pamphlet "Dark Horse Insider". After 28 issues, the pamphlet was discontinued and replaced with Volume 2, a full-length comic book format filled with blurbs for each comic published that month. These frequently wind up in comic book bargain bins but the pamphlets are much thinner than magazines and harder to sell, even as clearance items. Which is a shame, since each one is a cheap little nostalgia jolt for comics junkies of a certain vintage. I found this stray one, #19(02/91), among magazines from other publishers. At only eight pages, I went ahead and scanned the whole thing. Check it out.

0024: The Other Man Who Fell To Earth

Sure I miss David Bowie. But I can't help but worry about Mike Allred. A year ago, during the months after Bowie's death as the current "Silver Surfer" series kept getting delay after delay during the character's 50th Anniversary, I would often wonder if Allred was rocking in the fetal position somewhere. Bowie and early 70's glitter rock in general infused some of Allred's most successful work, such as "Madman" and "Red Rocket 7". Naming a regular cast member "Mott the Hoople" is not subtle. But there's always been a lot more to Allred's stories than a fruit salad of pop culture allusions. Witness: "Astroeque".

 

Dark Horse is still selling this on their website. I have no clue about its Netflix availability, but that's the perfect outlet for a movie like this. The budget is so low and so many of the cast and crew are closely ( and often literally) related that the line between "experimental film" and "home movie" blurs. According to an interview in "Modern Masters Volume 16: Mike Allred" (TwoMorrows, April 2008), Allred states that the version included as a bonus on the "G-Men From Hell" DVD is the "full screen" (meaning chopped down to the shape of a TV screen) version with sound that wasn't mixed properly. This version, released on NTSC VHS in 1998, is the version he would have preferred they use.

The movie itself, made in 1996, looks in retrospect like a rehearsal for a specific scene from Red Rocket 7, without costumes. This movie, the LP-sized comic book mini-series and the album on CD (featuring Allred's band The Gear) all feel like parts of a multimedia project, in which no one part is completely redundant to the others. Of course, that also means that no one part is complete in itself. I would recommend the film with the caveat that one should watch it both before AND after reading the collected "Red Rocket 7". The album supplements both but stands on its own as a musical work if not as a story; I would save the album for last. The comic series is the best of the three but it has a way of making parts of the movie that are ambiguous become much more specific. The movie plays on the viewers' imaginations more. Reading the comic first has the same effect as watching a music video (remember those?) before hearing a song in the context of an album as audio alone. Without the video, a piece of music can provoke different images in the imaginations of different people. After seeing it, that's the image that comes to most peoples' minds. I will say that watching the movie was much more enjoyable after reading the comic, but less thought provoking.

0003: Past Futures

The cover scan below is from the 1989 promotional comic "Dark Horse Futures" (hence this post's title).

A quick Google Image search shows several instances of this cover ("...from Hard Boiled by Geof Darrow", according to the inside front cover), but no other possible sources. That suggests that the art is unique but with all the websites dealing in original art these days I'm sort of surprised that it hasn't shown up in any other form on the internet.

Anyway, Hard Boiled went on to become pretty famous, as did many of the features in this 32-page newsprint promo. Only the front cover is in color, the rest in B&W. Some of the titles touted were already being published when this came out (Concrete, Aliens, Flaming Carrot, Mr. Monster, etc.) and others were imminent. A few, however,,, well, I admit I have no idea what happened to them. (This is the point where Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland burst in and say, "Hey gang, we've got everything we need to start our very own rumor! My uncle will let us use his barn, and we can sell tickets!") Cast your rheumy third eye on this little oddity:

A six-issue color series? Not that I ever saw, and I ravenously seek out whatever I can find from those first ten years of Dark Horse. I don't even remember seeing ads for that. In cases like this (and there are a lot of them once you start digging into old fanzines and publisher solicitations) there are several possible explanations:

• The project surfaced under another title.
• The project was brought to another publisher.
• The project was eventually published in a different format.
• Any combination of the above three
• The project was abandoned altogether.
• The project was brought to a different medium other than comics.

If I had to guess, I'd say 'abandoned'. The inside back cover of the promo has a mail order form for DH back issues. The most recent issue of Dark Horse Presents offered on it is #30 (06/89), which contains a 15-page collaboration by Luke and Norwood called "Project Overkill". There is no masked hero in it and no one mentions the name "Equinox". The next Dark Horse credit I can find for Luke is five years later when he works on several "Comics' Greatest World" titles. Norwood had more credits in the intervening time, mostly on features tied to movies (Aliens, Predator, The Abyss). That shouldn't be surprising, since they were both working in film and TV before and after this. They both worked on the TV movie sequel to Disney's "Not Quite Human" and Norwood provided storyboards for "Abyss", "Honey I Shrunk The Kids", "Star Trek IV" and "Terminator 2". They both still straddle the worlds of film and comics, each having worked on different animation projects for Marvel and DC in the last five years.

So, whither Equinox Prime? I have no idea what happened to it, but if you think you may have spotted it in another form (or if you ARE Eric Luke or Phillip Norwood), drop a line in the comments. I may post other orphan projects in the future (including from this same promo comic) but the next post will be audio or music related again.