MYTHCOMICS: "TO DREAM-- PERCHANCE TO LIVE" (FLAMING CARROT #8, 1985)

 "Certain particulars have more of an archetypal content than others; that is to say, they are 'eminent instances' which stand forth in a characteristic amplitude as representatives of many others; they enclose in themselves a certain totality, arranged in a certain way, stirring in the soul something at once familiar and strange, and thus outwardly as well as inwardly they lay claim to a certain unity and generality."-- FOUNTAIN, p. 54.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Wheelwright's borrowed (from Melville) phrase "eminent instances" parallels my repeated distinction between the simple variables and the complex variables that make up narrative fiction. Unlike Wheelwright, my definition of "eminence" is strongly if not fundamentally bound to the ways in which the elements, or "instances," of a narrative reflect epistemological patterns found throughout human culture, which patterns provide what I define as "complexity." By the same token, simple variables in a narrative might be termed "non-eminent instances," because they are purely, or almost purely, functional in nature. Often these elements are just there, providing no more than background. However, in some narratives-- particularly those of the "nonsense fantasy" category I've been discussing-- an author can invoke in his readers a particular type of strangeness by undercutting a familiar "eminent instance" by infusing it with some non-eminent depictions or associations. Take the cover of FLAMING CARROT #2.                                                             

In this single-panel joke, author Bob Burden has his main character, the demented, absurdist superhero Flaming Carrot, refuse the challenge of "Mister Death" to play a game of chess, and instead propose a game of whiffleball. Though Burden often made random substitutions of silly images to undermine the Carrot's adventures, this substitution of whiffleball for chess is not so random. There can be little doubt that the trope "Death playing chess with a mortal" is derived from Ingmar Bergman's famous scenario from his 1957 film THE SEVENTH SEAL. A reader who knows nothing of that cinematic milestone, however, may still get the essence of the joke: chess is serious, whiffleball is silly, so substituting whiffleball for chess in any context is likely meant to carry a humorous context. Often Burden's substitutions were simple inversions like this one. But in the story I'll discuss here, Burden again invokes familiar images or tropes that have "eminent" associations and then tries to undercut them with their "non-eminent" opposites-- but what he assembles still keeps some of the original epistemological patterns, mostly belonging to the metaphysical category.                                             

  The splash panel for PERCHANCE abounds in random imagery. Yet Burden can't quite manage to exclude the topic that the story is functionally about: the Carrot's descent into, and escape from, the world of death.                                                                                           

               

                               

                                                                                                                                                                           A few pages provide setup for the situation: that the Carrot fell victim to an ignominious accident that almost killed him, though a clique of "practitioners of eccentric and oddball science" revive the looney hero, and the rest of the issue is devoted to his description of the wacky limbo into which he descended. The dream of falling is fairly basic, even with the caveat that the hero falls in a drawn-out manner, like Alice, but Burden adds an interesting twist. After striking the ground, the Carrot finds himself hanging from a tree, where bugs crawl upon him. This may not be a reference to any specific story, though it did remind me of the story of Ishtar's descent into the underworld. In that myth, Ishtar is forced to surrender all of her vestments, leaving her as an empty shell to be hung on a peg until she's later rescued. In contrast, the Carrot only escapes his helpless suspension by surrendering "the things that held me to the tree"-- though he gets some help from luck, for he only gets completely free when he rolls his lucky number.                                     

             

                                                               

Carrot gets some minimal guidance from a "broadcast speaker" implanted in his chest by a person unknown, apparently in one or more previous stories, but the hero still needs a lot of input from the limbo-locals. A random association reminds Carrot of his early life, so he wanders to a suburban division where he encounters his childhood home, complete with his mother, who's now a vicious monster. Carrot escapes her with ease, and then gets advice from a "Beanhead," who tells him can only escape limbo by seeking a crossroads, though the fastest way to get there is to play a round of golf. The two of them encounter a city, though Beanhead declines to follow Carrot there.      

Carrot wanders a little in the city until he happens to enter a gambling joint. There he meets an unnamed man with an eyepatch (so I'll call him Patch), one who's been looking for Carrot to return him to the real world, sort of a reversal on the Greek psychopomp who guides souls to the underworld. Unfortunately, Patch is Limbo's version of a Lyft driver, obliged to take more than one soul back. Carrot and Patch are joined by two guys whose only function is to give Burden a few new joke-routines. However, Patch meets his fate when he seeks to pick up a third "rider," for the third man objects to the name Patch calls him, and both of them perish in a gun-duel. Carrot steals Patch's ring and the three survivors flee an unseen horror, "The Dragoon."                                                                                      

A clue inside the dead guide's ring leads the trio to another dimensional traveler, Cracked Jack (presumably a pun on the cereal Crackerjack, in which one could find cheap prizes, including rings). This decrepit individual, who has a spider living in his skull, sends the trio to Potter's Field, which is the common phrase for a cemetery dedicated to people who can't pay for funerals.                                             

  

On the belief that they can only enter Potter's Field with a bribe, the three goofuses waste a page burglarizing a rich lord's tower for some silver (pantyhose) eggs-- none of which matters, since they never meet anyone who asks for a bribe. When the three reach Potter's Field, it's not a cemetery but a movie theater, and the ticket-taker calls security on them. The guards prove to be the same long-legged wights seen on the splash page, but Carrot drives them off with his "real world" pistol (which he acquired from the very unreal simulacrum of his early home). And then the Dragoon overtakes the trio, proving to be a gigantic version of the Carrot himself. Can you say, "hero must fight evil version of himself?"                                     

              

Following the demise of Carrot's companions, he rather belatedly asks the voice in his chest how the Dragoon can get so big. The voice tells him the giant makes himself big with "the power of suggestion," but when Carrot wonders if he can do it too, the voice discourages him. However, this time the demented crusader is correct; he enlarges himself and knocks his big doppelganger for a loop. He rushes to the movie-screen, entreating entrance back to the real world, but someone on the other side wants a password. Then the chest-voice finally justifies its existence with a word "means everything," and that gets Carrot back to the world of the living. He finishes telling his story to the mad scientists, who debate its truth-value while Carrot invites a bunch of cute bar-singers to serenade him. The End-- except for my verdict that if one excised all the "non-eminent" elements with which Burden tries to make the hero's journey wacky rather than imposing, what one would have would resemble many of the "straight" after-death voyages in both canonical and pop fiction.