All PostsMarder, Larry. Beanworld Book 1: Wahoolazuma! Dark Horse: 2009. $19.95, hardcover, 272p. 9781595822406.
I discovered Beanworld back in the early 90′s just in time for its original run to come to an end. I found a few of the last issues in the cardboard long boxes of my local comic store, and for a long time the other back issues were on my “want” list. I never did get the whole series, giving up on it as lost and never to be continued. So I was delighted to hear the announcement that Dark Horse would be reprinting the series in hardcover volumes and that Larry Marder was making new material to follow up on the reprints.
Wahoolazuma! is the first reprint volume, collecting the first nine issues of the series. Beanworld is a strange comic, a series of stories taking place in an abstracted ecosystem. This book begins with a map of the “Known Beanworld,” showing the primary geographic features of the circumscribed world these stories exist in. Accompanying the map is a glossary of terms and characters. The placement of the map and glossary at the beginning of the book is an odd choice. You see, these stories are all a slow process of unfolding the world. A number of places on the map and entries in the glossary don’t exist until a few issues in.
Beanworld is primarily concerned with the Beans, a group of beans with arms and legs who live on a small island. Their world and lives are a carefully balanced system of interactions, exchanges, and involvements with their surroundings. The first issue shows us how they get food, a process involving attack and exchange with a group of one armed creatures called “Hoi-Polloi” who gamble with the Bean’s “chow” (that is, “chow” is food to the Beans and money to the Hoi-Polloi). The Bean’s have to attack the Hoi-Polloi to steal chow, so they can live. In exchange they leave behind a “sprout butt” which is the product of the tree that grows on the Bean’s island and looks over them (they call it “Gran’Ma’Pa”). The Hoi-Polloi transform the sprout butt into chow and then go back to their gambling. After explaining this system, the first issue then introduces an invader, a group of creatures killing the Hoi-Polloi. Despite the fact that the Beans are always fighting the Hoi-Polloi to get chow, they must defeat the invader because they need the Hoi-Polloi to make chow. If this all sounds rather odd and a bit cutesy, it is, but Marder makes it work by balancing the cutesy with an underlying thematic seriousness.
The narrative scheme of the first issue–where an aspect of the ecosystem is explained and then a new variable is thrown into the mix–is the primary one for these issues. Each new variable ends up leaving behind some new part to the world. The ecosystem is changed, the Beans are changed. Marder starts with a fairly simple world/system and then grows it, one step at a time, as the series continues. With a series based on a world (and the characters in that world), the structure of the series is unlike most narratives that focus on individual characters or plots. One might call it an evolutionary narrative: a narrative that is design to change slowly and, potentially, endlessly.
Beanish, the artist bean, works on his 'Look See' show.
Marder’s ability to create this form of narrative starts from the extremely simplified nature of both the world and his representation of it. Beanworld if rife with repetitions, patterns, and simple shapes, perhaps best exemplified by the “four realities” that exist just beneath the water the Bean’s island sits on. These “realities” are layered fields, each filled with its own primary shape objects, “slats” (rectangles), “hoops” (circles), “twinks” (stars), and “chips” (triangles) which the Beans use to make tools and art. The Beans themselves are amazingly expressive despite being, at their most basic point, a bean shape with stick figure arms and legs and a dots for eyes. Marder makes the most of his constrained and abstracted representations, pulling out an arsenal of tricks from the cartoonist’s grab bag to add expression, motion, emotion, and explanation to the art.
Mr. Spook, the soldier leader, and Professor Garbanzo, inventor/scientist, gather 'chips' in one of the 'four realities.'
Beanworld is that rare comic that is, to my mind, truly “all ages.” Any reader (such as a child) can enjoy the stories and art at their basic visual/narrative level, while many older readers can dig deeper for the thematic elements running (just) beneath the surface. I’m looking forward to Book 2, out in July, which reprints the rest of the original series, and Book 3, out in December, which has all new material.