BEANWORLD! And also the 2004 San Diego Con

Cafe Society
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Let’s start with the basics: this thread is both a Tales of the Beanworld appreciation thread and, hopefully, the beginnings of an SDMB-style investigative report.

For those of you at home, Tales of the Beanworld was a seriously visionary (and peculiar) comic book, published by the late and lamented Eclipse Comics from 1983 to 1993. Billed as ‘an ecological romance,’ TOTB was an investigation into the lives of the various species of the Beanworld: their interdependence, their cultures, the conflicts between their desires to live traditional lives and their desires to learn new things about the world they inhabited. It was this wild mix of Native American mythology, ecology, TV advertisements, and the nature of things like Progress and Culture and Art. It was friggin’ brilliant. Thinking about the Beanworld, the saying went, was habit-forming. For more details, see the closest thing there is to an official Beanworld Website: I could go on and on and on here. I worked at Eclipse for a while, and nothing—not even getting faxed MIRACLEMAN script pages from Neil Gaiman—brought us joy like new TOTB material arriving in the house.

TOTB was created by Larry Marder, who wrote and drew the books on the side while he worked as an adman and, later, as an executive at Image Comics. The final issues were released erratically at best, as Marder’s job took up more of his time. Issue 21 came out in 1993; in 1994, I spoke with him at the San Diego Con and even saw a few pages of a graphic-novel-length issue he was working on called “The Float Factor.” And then Eclipse died, and Marder got busier and busier with the business of comics, and…

And that’s all we really know. Collected editions of the original issues are still available, but there’s been no indication of when, or if, there will be any more TOTB ever published. But it should tell you something that even after eleven years of waiting for the Float Factor GN, the Beanworld fans can still get all worked up just thinking about it. We live in hope.

Is anybody going to the San Diego Comic Con this year? Would you be willing to ask around—“Is Larry Marder here this year?..Has anybody heard from Larry Marder?..Larry, what’s the news with Beanworld?” Or has anybody heard anything?

Because there are a lot of us whose heads still light up when we read about how Beanish broke out and discovered art; or about how Mr. Spook got his trusty fork from Big-Fish-In-Sky, and how it was eventually stolen; or about how Heyoka floated up into the sky; and we are still waiting.

(Or if not that: any other Beanworld fans out there? Let’s reminisce.)

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  1. Never heard of Beanworld.

  2. Me and the missus will be at Comic-con all four days, so yes, I would be willing to ask around. Post a list of questions, and I will see if there are any answers forthcoming.

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I’ve heard that Marder was actually killed in a chow raid several years ago. Professor Garbonzo has forbid the release of this news. I cannot fathom her reasons.

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I LOVE Beanworld!

I once manned a booth at the San Diego con. Was very cool; got to meet my comic hero, Mike Allred. Throb.

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GrandfatherTrout, you can check the official San Diego Comic Con website to see if Marder is listed among the guests: http://www.comic-con.org/ . I attended back in 2000, when I was nowhere nearly as into comics as I am now, but it was an amazing experience. It dwarfs the Orlando (FL) MegaCon that I now go to every spring.

lissener, Mike Allred is my favorite artist too! I usually follow writers from comic to comic, but Allred is the only artist who can get me to check a book out based on his name and reputation alone. Seems like a stand-up guy, too.

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I loved Beanworld and still have most of the original issues. After one of the issues (which was a mediation on the role of the artist in society), I wrote a fan letter to Larry that was, ahem, rather exurberent. Embarassingly so, as I’m not normally that type of fan.

He sent back a lovely letter with Beanish at the bottom, and information about the strip’s future plans. I still have it and treasure it, next to my Dave Sim-signed Cerebus statue and my Pratchett-signed “The Last Hero.”

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Wow! Okay, embarassing. I go off on vacation for a while, and by the time I come back I’ve forgotten all about this thread. Pardon me if I bump it back to life here…

He’s not listed on the Con’s site, but I have established that Larry will indeed be at the Con—in his professional role as president of McFarlane Toys. (So that’s where he’s been hiding!) If you’re going to the Con, here’s what I’d love to know.
Will Beanworld ever see the light of day again? When?On the other hand, if you’re not going to the Con, I 'd love to hear what you think of my personal Big Beanworld Theory.

We’re told that Mr. Spook was not the result of Gran’Ma’Pa accidentally receiving Hoi-Polloi reproductive propellant—but that this is somehow close to the answer. I think that Gran’Ma’Pa took the Hoi-Polloi propellant deliberately, in an attempt to create a new sort of bean: perhaps one capable of creating its own chow from sprout-butts. Sadly, this didn’t work out. So now she’s trying a new tactic: she has sent Heyoka into the sky to alter the Beanworld influence itself. (As seen in the most recent issues, some eleven years ago.) Having done so, the next batch of beans will be…something *more.*There. That’s my theory. I’ve been waiting eleven years to find somebody to chew this over with. Discuss.