Retro Review

Larry Marder’s Tales of the Beanworld is one of my all-time favorite comic books. Defying convention and classification, this appropriately self-titled “most peculiar comic book experience” ran for 21 issues, each one sown with clues revealing a little more of a world like no other. I was thrilled to hear that the series is coming back with the Beanworld Holiday Special this December, and I’m hoping this will be the first of many new Beanworld books.

On the surface, Tales of the Beanworld is about a tribe of creatures called Beans, who try to live in harmony with their small world, which they do not realize is a damaged, fragile place. Each Bean has a role to play in the tribe, either as a hunter-gatherer or as a thinker or artist, and their way of life is simple, but not without danger. The Beanworld is also inhabited by the Hoi-Polloi, with whom the Beans have an adversarial relationship, although both sides recognize that they need each other to survive. Furthermore, the Beanworld is part of the Big•Big•Picture, in other words, the Universe or Multiverse, and for the first time in the Beans’ memories, creatures from other worlds are encroaching on theirs.

At a deeper level, this book is whatever you bring to it: an ecological fantasy, an anthropological study of tribal structure, a creation mythology, a political commentary, or the beginnings of an epic cycle. You could even argue that it is a gentler kind of super-hero comic. Continue Reading »