-Link- Marder art in Cliff Gallery

Walt Parrish collects original artwork with some unique themes, including a massive collection of drawings of characters on cliffs. And of course there’s a famous cliff in the Known Beanworld, called the Legendary Edge, so Marder’s represented in the gallery with a nice piece of a Cutie watching as Proffy takes a dive off the Edge into the Thin Lake.

-Link- Marder in Baltimore 2006 photo

Heidi MacDonald, who did one of the most extensive Larry Marder interviews ever in THE COMICS JOURNAL #201, has some photos from a 2006 convention in Baltimore over on her blog The Beat. Half way down is Larry Marder at the CBLDF table with a cute apparently new Beanworld drawing.

Bean Spotting – Doctor Fate #41 [1992]

Doctor Fate #41 [1992]
Published by DC
Written by William Messner-Loebs, drawn by Peter Gross

As mentioned before, Marder was a regular letterhack to Loebs’ creator owned solo comic JOURNEY back in the 1980s. This I suppose partly explains the rather odd reference on page 14 of issue #41, the final issue of this particular Dr. Fate series.

Inza Nelson, then holder of the helmet and power of Fate, is reading a book called “Beans and The World” by “Fr. Lawrence Marder”, a geneticist and mystic who studied beans and taught using “subtle, illustrated metaphors”. Hmmm. Interestingly, the lesson she learns from the book is one straight out of the Beanworld, about how everything is connected and dependent, and is actually a crucial aspect of the final resolution of the series in the next ten pages.

-Link- Marder Wonder Woman sketch

Art collecting fans ask for the weirdest things, sometimes. God bless them for it. In a gallery of Wonder Woman sketches from a variety of artist is Larry Marder’s unique and terrifying vision of the Amazon warrior. Trust me, needs to be seen to be believed.

Marder-ography – Images of Omaha #2 [1992]

Images of Omaha #2 [1992]
Pin-up by Larry Marder

OMAHA THE CAT DANCER was a long-running adult funny animal comic by Reed Waller and Kate Worley. At this time Waller was going through serious health problems that caused enough financial struggles that Kitchen Sink and a bunch of cartoonists got together to produce a pair of benefit books. This second one features a cover by Dave Sim and contributions from the likes of Al Williamson, Scott McCloud, Alan Moore, Melinda Gebbie, Bryan Talbot and dozens more. Well worth picking for many of the pieces if you don’t mind the nudity that figures into a lot of them. Larry Marder contributes one of the cleaner images in the book, a page with the title character dancing with about a dozen denizens of the Beanworld, capturing one of the important aspects of the series.

While Waller got through his medical problems, unfortunately Kate Worley passed away a few years ago. However, OMAHA continues with Waller working with Jim Vance on plot outlines that Worley had done before her passing, and the original series and new material is currently being published by NBM (http://www.nbmpub.com/eurotica/ewaller/cathome.html, adult material at site).

Marder-ography – Zot #4 [1984]

Zot #4 [1984]
Eclipse
Illustrated letter by Larry Marder

Of course the ZOT / BEANWORLD and McCloud / Marder connection would grow quite a bit in the years to come, with them sharing a publisher, cameo appearances and minor references galore, one doing introductions for the others book and more. This letter was before BEANWORLD was published, though, and has Marder with a super-hero version on one of his Beans praising ZOT by comparing Jules Feiffer’s remarks about Superman creator Joe Shuster’s classic work and McCloud’s early issues.

Scott McCloud of course has come a long way from the early issues of ZOT, best known now for his non-fiction books on comics theory in comic book form, the latest of which, MAKING COMICS, he’s currently on a year-long tour promoting.

-Link- the BeanWeb

Although it hasn’t been updated since around the last time there was a new Beanworld publication, Mark Irons’ BeanWeb is still the best destination on-line for the Beanworld fan, with character profiles, summaries of every issue and some various rare stuff, plus of course old issues of Gunk’l’dunk. Check it out.

Marder-ography – Journey #12 [1984]

Journey #12
July 1984, Aardvark-Vanaheim
Illustrated letter by Larry Marder

Even before BEANWORLD launched Larry Marder was a letter-hack of some note, sending illustrated notes to various books of the time. One of the most common places that actually ran the letters was William Messner-Loebs JOURNEY, a comic chronicling the frontier adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire. Some aspects of Loebs’ stories dealt with the same aspects of Native American myth, ceremony and culture that Marder uses in his own work.

This little illustration was sent about #8 of the series, which had MacAlistaire revealing some of what he carried around with him. Some odd looking creatures in this one, no doubt from some far off corner of the Big Big Picture.

Bill Loebs did a lot of great comics work, either solo (JOURNEY, BLISS ALLEY) or as an artist (MR. MONSTER, WASTELAND) or a writer for other artists (JONNY QUEST, EPICURUS THE SAGE, FLASH). Unfortunately more recently he was in the news having fallen on some bad luck, but fortunately seems to have come out of that okay.

Marder-ography – The Art of Jack Kirby [1992]

The Art of Jack Kirby [1992]
published by Blue Rose Press

This heavily illustrated biography of Jack Kirby by Ray Wyman Jr. is flawed in some ways, but still an excellent look at the life of Kirby and a lot of his work. Among the sundry delights is this 1986 jam illustration given to Kirby by about fifty or so artists, and Larry Marder is right there in the middle of it all with one of his beans (look about two places over Groo if you’re looking for it on the full piece).

Kirby is of course at the forefront of the varied influences that led to Marder creating the Beanworld, most obvious in a couple of Mr. Spook’s more dramatic super-hero moments. And it goes without saying that I like him too.

Marder-ography – Shadowhawk Gallery #1 [1994]

Shadowhawk Gallery #1 [1994]
Gallery page by Larry Marder

Back in the boom times of the 1990s you’d see a lot of Gallery books like this, with a few dozen images on a particular character by various artists. Card sets were also hot at the time, and a lot of these images appeared in a set of Shadowhawk cards, although I’m not sure if the Marder piece does. Probably, since the bios in the back usually mention pieces which appear in this book for the first time, and the Marder one doesn’t say that.

Anyway, Shadowhawk was Jim Valentino’s contribution to the Image Comics launch, and at the time Larry Marder was the executive director of Image. He was also a long time fan of Valentino’s work, going back to the letter page of the old NORMALMAN series. That makes him a natural for the book, although not otherwise fitting in with the vast majority of the 1990s scratchy-ink lots-of-lines versions of an urban vigilante. This is Marder reducing a character to iconography in his own style, capturing the essential elements (the night theme, the city, the claw-like hawk symbol).

Other more traditional pieces worth looking at in the book are the pages by Mike Allred, Norm Breyfogle and Sam Kieth.

As mentioned, the back of the book also has short notes about each page by Valentino, mentioning Marder is the “nexus of all comic book realities” and saying the piece is among his favourites.

Bean Spotting – Patty Cake #7 [1996]

Patty Cake #7 [1996]
Permanent Press
“The Unkindest Cut” by Scott Roberts

This is the first series of Scott Roberts’ PATTY CAKE series, one of the best comics to come out of the 1990s, and which continues to this day in the PATTY CAKE AND FRIENDS series from Slave Labor / Amaze Ink. It’s a constantly delightful energetic comic about the wonders of life as seen through the eyes of a young girl. Highly recommended. Check the site here.

This two page story is a good example of Roberts’ mastery of his techniques, with a mostly silent story about Patty getting hurt, requiring a trip to the doctor and a ridiculously oversized needle (no doubt much bigger in her head than in life) to the butt. In the aftermath of the trauma, she’s spoiled by her parents with all the comforts of childhood, which in this case includes a BEANWORLD comic book, much to the disgust of her older sister.

Oddly, when the story was reprinted in the 2003 collection PATTY CAKE – LOVE IS ALL AROUND paperback from Amaze Ink, the page was slightly edited to remove the comic book. Not sure why that was done.

Bean Spotting – Wandering Star #9 [1995]

Wandering Star #9 [1995]
Pen & Ink Comics
by Teri S. Wood

WANDERING STAR was an excellent science fiction drama that ran 21 issues, first from Wood’s own Pen & Ink Comics and then from Sirius Entertainment from 1993 to 1997. Presenting the story of Cassandra Andrews, a young woman from Earth who attends a Galactic Academy and finds herself deep in the middle of an interstellar war with her friends. It’s a wonderful story, at various times exciting and amusing and then veering off into tragic and touching.

In this issue, Cassandra continues the story of her return to Earth, now under alien control, the death of a close friend and the discovery that her father is responsible for much of what has gone on. She returns to her room in the last scene, where we see that her decorations lean strongly to 200 year old self-published comic books, with posters including BONE, CEREBUS, STARCHILD, HEPCATS and STRANGERS IN PARADISE. She also has some small figures on her table, including Phone Bone and, in the point of this post, Beanish (plus I think that little thing next to him is Ted the Bug from BONE).

This story was also reprinted in the second of three WANDERING STAR trade paperback collections, and eventually in the 2016 complete hardcover collection from Dover.

Hoka Hoka HEY

Welcome to what I'm calling Gunk'l'dunk v03. What was once an irregular newsletter for fans of Larry Marder's TALES OF THE BEANWORLD (see sidebar for links to the previous versions) is now an irregular weblog devoted to the same. Jumps in technology in the near decade since the last of the newsletters mean you can expect a lot more visuals. The main project for the first little while will be putting together a more detailed Marder bibliography and the "Bean Spotting" section of Beanworld characters and references by other creators. After those are done, maybe some character profiles and the like.