Visions #1
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeVisions #1 is the debut vehicle for Bob Burden's Flaming Carrot, one of the earliest and most distinctive characters to emerge from the late-1970s American independent comics scene — a surrealist superhero parody that arrived years before the indie explosion fully crested. The issue planted a seed that would grow into a multi-publisher series spanning Aardvark-Vanaheim, Renegade Press, Dark Horse, and Image, while directly inspiring the ethos of creator-owned, self-published comics that fueled titles like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Scholars and critics have positioned Flaming Carrot alongside Cerebus as a 'missing link' between the Underground Comix movement and the New Wave independent boom of the early 1980s, demonstrating that experimental, non-mainstream storytelling could find a genuine readership outside the direct market's superhero mainstream. It also marks the first appearance of Lightrunner, a secondary character introduced in the same issue.
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Visions was created as a convention program booklet for the Atlanta Fantasy Fair, co-founded in 1975 by Harley Anton, Gary Cook, and Lamar Waldron; Cook and Waldron co-published the Visions series beginning with this 1979 debut, with Waldron serving as editor. The Flaming Carrot story originated under impulsive circumstances: Burden, then Waldron's roommate, watched Waldron labor for a week on a single splash page for his own Visions contribution and accepted a spontaneous dare to write and draw an entire eight-page story in a single sitting — a challenge he met, and Waldron accepted the result for publication. The issue carried a Neal Adams cover and pinup alongside a Jim Steranko interview, lending it immediate credibility among the convention's audience of dedicated comics fans; the print run was limited to 1,000 copies, most of which were signed and numbered by Burden himself.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Flaming Carrot, the surrealist superhero created, written, and illustrated by Bob Burden — a character who would go on to be published by Aardvark-Vanaheim, Renegade Press, Dark Horse Comics, and Image Comics.
- First appearance of Lightrunner, a separate character whose story was scripted by Lamar Waldron.
- Published in 1979 by Vision Publications as the program booklet for the Atlanta Fantasy Fair, a multi-genre convention held annually in Atlanta, Georgia from 1975 to 1995.
- Co-published by Gary Cook and Lamar Waldron; edited by Waldron; the oversized magazine measured approximately 12" × 9" (or 8½" × 11" per some seller descriptions).
- Limited print run of 1,000 copies, most signed and numbered by Bob Burden.
- Issue also features cover art and a pinup by Neal Adams, plus an interview with Jim Steranko conducted by Lamar Waldron.
- Bob Burden's lettering collaborator on the Flaming Carrot strips throughout the Visions run was Roxanne Starr, who would later become a pioneer of computer lettering.
- Flaming Carrot continued to appear in each subsequent annual issue of Visions through 1987, with the stories in Visions #4 (1982) reportedly convincing Dave Sim of Aardvark-Vanaheim to publish the character as a regular ongoing series beginning in 1984.
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