Page 45 Review by Stephen, Mark & Jonathan
"The search party departs. The adoration continues."
Occasionally something comes along in a medium that is so radically different to anything else you've experienced that it makes you stop and marvel. BEANWORLD is just such a creation.
Mark rated this right next to Jim Woodring's work (THE FRANK BOOK, WEATHERCRAFT, FRAN, JIM etc) as one of those inspired visions so personal and peculiar that most other creative industries would neither support nor understand its genius. I'm with him on that.
Larry Marder created a unique world with a fully realised, sustainable ecosystem which operated with its own radically viable laws for construction, reproduction and sustenance. Its several species of inhabitants had their own hierarchy, its individuals their own roles, aspirations and priorities. They even had their own terminology/slang. With their passion for play, exploration, art and invention, if I were to try to capture the series in a single word, I'd try "Celebration". If I were allowed a second word, it would be "Cooperation".
Both those concepts lie at the heart of any healthy and fecund friendship or community, so there were lessons to be learned way back then that would have put the human race much further ahead of the game than it currently stands. I'm going to stick my neck out to say something typically stupid too: it's like a platform game. The Beans' learning process is like a platform game. "Oh, this is what I need to find/create and fit in there in order to make progress...!"
Many moons ago the far sager Mark wrote this:
"I've read this work for a decade now and I find something new each year I try it again. First it was a cute little story of two races in an imaginary world and the antagonistic/symbiotic way they lived with each other. Then I noticed that the three leads were Beanish, an artist, Professor Garbanzo, an inventor, and Mr Spook, a protector, so it lead to their place in society and their growing knowledge about their role and the work of the others. Everyone has a ritual and everything's there for a reason. When a new element is added we get to see each reaction, either for or against.
"There are nods to native American art and mythology, Jack Kirby and Marcel Duchamp (sooner or later Beanish is going to hit on The Large Glass although he's a long way off yet). Both art and writing are pared down to the bare minimum; symbols are one of Marder's favourite subjects (he once worked in advertising, but forgive him that)."
More recently the far fitter Jonathan wrote:
"Larry Marder succeeds in creating a whole bizarre new reality, or in fact The Four Realities of Slots, Hoops, Twinks and Chips which you might just fall into if you leap off The Legendary Edge whilst on a chow mission amongst the Hoi-Polloi Ring Herd! He then proceeds to populate it with an ever increasingly weird set of individuals who just happen to be beans such as Beanish, an artist and creator of the Fabulous Look-See Shows, Mr. Spook, hero and leader of the Chow Soljer army, and Professor Garbanzo, problem solver and generally deep thinker. And certainly not forgetting the musical Boom'r Band who try to keep everyone entertained.
"The only way I can do justice to BEANWORLD is to say reading it feels like you are a spectator to a very different version of Universe creation unfolding before your very eyes, piece by surreal piece. You never guess who or what is going to appear next and what it may mean for the Beans and their reality, and therein lies the beauty of it. All disbelief is suspended, and anything and everything is possible.
The whole of the original series in one massive chunk.
