Drawn to the Odd

To comic book junkies, Bob Burden is a kind of cult superhero. To everyone else, he’s more of a mystery.

Superheroes and mystery figure prominently in Burden’s world; he’s the creator of Mystery Men, a comic book about as unlikely a group of action heroes ever to save a metropolis. On Friday the movie based on the comic book characters opens starring Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, William H. Macy and Hank Azaria, among others.

Burden is well-known in the comics world for his series “Flaming Carrot,” which debuted in 1979. “Carrot” was a surreal twist on the classic superhero genre, featuring a bungling protagonist who wore a giant carrot mask, lobbed stink bombs at the bad guys, and climbed walls with toilet plungers. It’s also where the Mystery Men made their first appearance in the late ‘80s.

Now, after laboring for 20 years in relative obscurity, Burden is the latest ink slinger to be embraced by Hollywood. He joins the growing list of comics creators who have successfully segued to the big screen in recent years, a list that includes Todd McFarlane of “Spawn” fame, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and Lowell Cunningham of “Men in Black.”

The 47-year-old Burden accepts his newfound success with a Zen-like sense of wonder. “I’ve been spending all my life foisting surrealism on other people,” he muses over lunch at Universal Studios, which is releasing the action comedy. “This is definitely a surreal, far-out moment.”

A few days earlier, the quixotic artist was being interviewed by the likes of CNN and “Entertainment Tonight” on the red carpet at the premiere of “Mystery Men.” After the screening, guests were taken by tram to an extravagant, disco-themed party deep in the studio’s lot. “Someday I’ll look back upon it and it will sink in,” he says. “But right now, everything’s just moving so fast.”

It’s little wonder that Burden appreciates the absurdity of his situation. After all, his comics are anything but normal. In one, a woman breast-feeds a dictionary. In another, public safety is threatened by a dangerous flying dead dog.

The Mystery Men are a ragtag band of second-string, blue-collar superheroes such as Mr. Furious, whose “power” is that he gets really, really angry (Stiller); the Shoveler, who tries to hit people with his shovel (Macy); the Blue Raja, who throws forks--but never knives--at his enemies (Azaria); and the Spleen with a power best left unexplained (Paul Reubens). The off-kilter concept is not one a Hollywood studio usually picks up, let alone turns into a $65-million production.

But Mike Richardson, Burden’s publisher at the Oregon-based Dark Horse Comics, was quick to spot the mainstream potential of the Mystery Men.

“I could see that ‘Mystery Men’ had a much better shot at establishing Bob’s particular universe as a film than ‘Flaming Carrot,’ ” says Richardson, who, through his Dark Horse Entertainment company, successfully has turned a number of other comic books into movies, including “The Mask.”

In 1997, Richardson pitched the “Mystery Men” concept to producers Larry Gordon and Lloyd Levin at Universal. “My first impression was just how relatable the characters are,” says Levin, who already was familiar with Burden’s comics. “Bob has a real surrealistic sensibility, but at the core of his work is something that’s thematically so identifiable.

“I think there is an almost childlike persistence of all the characters,” says Levin. “And they ultimately hold on to the conviction that with courage and sacrifice, they can become what they dream.”

Gordon, Levin and Richardson went on to co-produce the film, acclaimed commercial director Kinka Usher directed and Neil Cuthbert wrote the screenplay. With its twisted sense of humor and offbeat heroes, “Mystery Men” is about as far from the traditional superhero film as you can get--a sort of anti-”Superman.” In the movie, the team of wannabe superheroes--Mr. Furious, the Shoveler, Blue Raja, the Bowler (Garofalo), Invisible Boy (Kel Mitchell), the Spleen and the Sphinx (Wes Studi)--must pull together to save Champion City when its “real” superhero, Captain Amazing (Greg Kinnear), is taken out of action by villain Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush).

Burden was on the set during some of the shooting of “Mystery Men,” answering questions that came up about his creations.

“There were times when we were kind of stumped in a scene and we asked him what he thought,” Levin says. “The great thing about him is that 10 minutes later, we’d get 30 pages in the fax machine with probably 29 pages filled with the lousiest ideas that you’ve ever read but that one page of pure genius.”

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Born in Buffalo, N.Y., Burden grew up in what he calls “the industrial rust belt” of the Northeast. His father worked at Westinghouse, and the family, including Burden and his three younger siblings, moved around a lot, to other blue-collar cities such as Pittsburgh and Milwaukee. He began reading comics as a young boy in the early ‘60s.

“I always liked to draw and write, but probably around the time I was 12, I saw Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Seven Samurai,’ and it hypnotized me,” Burden recalls. “The feeling I had was basically an epiphany for me. And I just decided that that’s what I wanted to be, a storyteller, a visual storyteller.”

After graduating with a degree in journalism from the University of Georgia, he made his way by selling antiques and collectibles. He spent the rest of his time writing, drawing and watching movies over and over, favoring such visually oriented directors as Federico Fellini, Jean Cocteau and Luis Bunuel.

By the time he was 27, Burden had settled on comics as his medium of expression and published his first “Flaming Carrot” story. In 1983, his regular comic series began, and it continued to be published sporadically until the early 1990s. As a cartoonist, he has won many awards, including the comics industry’s prestigious Eisner Award for best single issue. He’s earned two 1998 Eisner nominations for recent work such as “Flaming Carrot’s Greatest Hits, Volume Three.”

For more than a decade, Burden has been published by Dark Horse Comics, the third-largest American comic book company. Since 1994, Dark Horse Entertainment has helped develop six films in Hollywood, including “Time Cop,” “Virus” and “Barb Wire.” In addition, there have been animated and live-action TV series based on its titles.

In person, Burden is affable, intelligent and genteel. Wearing a modest tan and brown checked blazer and tan slacks, he hardly seems like the kind of guy who would come up with such concepts as the canned tornado, bombs made out of cellulite and diaper-wearing spiders. He lives in a suburb of Atlanta and thanks to the boon from the movie, he’s leasing a 1999 Lincoln Continental, his first new car.

“The movie didn’t change my life, but the opportunities it has presented have kept me spinning,” Burden says. “It probably would have been a good idea for me to just kick back for six months and let the chips fall where they may. Instead, I charged at full force, and it’s been kind of grueling.”

In the last six months, he put up a Web site (available at https://www.mysterymen.net) featuring descriptions of “Mystery Men” characters, a catalog of his books and merchandise, an interactive game and his philosophical musings. He also wrote a four-part “Mystery Men” comic book series that is being published to coincide with the release of the movie.

“I finally got an agent,” he says. “Now I feel that I can go out and get some of these things going that I want to do. I’ve been a mad scientist for 20 years now with story ideas and concepts and I’ve got a massive body of work that’s ready to go.”

Levin says he has great faith in Burden. “So few people are capable of ideas where you say, ‘Wow, I’ve never thought of that before.’ ”