21 March 2005
Comic Page of the Week
Flaming Carrot, No. 25, back cover. Flaming Carrot challenges Death to a game of Jarts a la The Seventh Seal [IMDB].
FC says: Yes, Mr. Death ... I'll play you a game! But not chess!!! Bah ... Fooey! My game is Jarts!!!
Here's the full text of Bob Burden's explanation of this scene:
Here's a piece of vintage Carrot memorabilia.
Back in late 1983 I drew this cover for FLAMING CARROT #2. The story was DEATH GETS DRUNK. There's a very cool Swedish movie from the fifties that you always saw in film class called THE SEVENTH SEAL. There is a classic scene in it, where a medieval knight plays Death a game of chess to keep his soul. I was goofing on this arty film when I had the Carrot wanting to play Death a game of JARTS.
We did up the ash cans of the issue (ash cans are sort of prototype issues, usually xeroxed and sent to distributors or taken to conventions to promote and "road test" the book) and I was real proud of the wacky reference to the famous Bergman film. When people around here didn't laugh at the cover I assumed it was the obscurity of the film but them some asked "What's jarts?" I soon discovered that a lot of people had never heard of this "lawn" game where you have these rings you lay on the ground and toss the large Javelin like darts into the rings, kind of like horse shoes. It was a fad thing up North when I was growing up and sort of a quintessential '60's thing like hoola-hoops or pez dispensers, very suburban and kitschy, but it apparently never made it down South.
Anyway, I redrew the cover a second time using wiffle ball as the gag and everything was find. I did use the face of Death from the first cover, pasting a xerox of it over the second face because I liked it better.
Genius. I think he still lives here in Atlanta.
BTW, this was one of many FC/TMNT cross-overs. They were pals on the independent circuit. There's also a Cerebus/FC cross-over around Cerebus 100 (the Ascension).
- Music from the Sonic Generator concert, 6 May 2015 posted by sstrader on 7 May 2015 at 11:01:42 PM
- The strangely enduring power of kitsch posted by sstrader on 21 December 2014 at 4:34:46 PM
- Nowhere Men phantom issues posted by sstrader on 22 April 2014 at 11:55:50 PM
- Where was I? posted by sstrader on 22 February 2014 at 11:54:34 AM
- New comic books discovered in Denver in October posted by sstrader on 7 December 2013 at 11:06:53 AM Other entries categorized in Current Interests:
- A Visit from the Goon Squad; Jennifer Egan posted by sstrader on 13 May 2013 at 9:36:56 PM
- The Fractal Prince; Hannu Rajaniemi posted by sstrader on 28 November 2012 at 12:11:33 AM
- Three books on atheism posted by sstrader on 11 November 2012 at 2:15:21 PM
- Three recent books posted by sstrader on 15 August 2012 at 7:41:32 PM
- The Unfolding of Language; Guy Deutscher posted by sstrader on 26 April 2012 at 9:48:06 PM