-Link- Beanworld the Animated Series

Well, okay, not “series”, but definitely animated. FashionBuddha Studio has their one-minute animated “Chow Raid” posted. Words cannot describe how great it is.

Want more? How about a quick animated dancing Beanish close-up? Or the Boom’r Band? Or some screen-caps from the FashionBuddha Flickr page?

Expect more info on this from Larry Marder’s blog soon.

-Link- Major Beanworld News

The big news is here, Beanworld going to Dark Horse, with reprints of the original series and new work to come in the next year, specifically a graphic novel called “Remember HERE when you are THERE”.

Good write-up in The Oregonian by Steve Duin on Marder’s presentation of the news and his influences, and an interview by George Khoury at CBR has some more details, including this:

My next story, a graphic novel, is clocking in at about 250 pages, I think, and it more or less wraps up “Beanworld’s Springtime Tales.” The next story enters the “Summer Saga.” The story ends after “Autumn” with the onset of “Winter.”

And also a one-page flyer on the story behind the re-birth of Beanworld.

-Link- CBLDF Drink n’ Draw and NYT

Larry Marder links to the gallery of art from a recent CBLDF event which features no less than 11 Marder sketches (including Jimmy Olsen!) and a New York Times article which mentions the event and Marder.

Bean Spotting – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #15 [1988]

 Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were probably the biggest phenomenon in self-publishing of the 1980s, coming from nowhere to become a multi-media empire that you couldn’t get away from in a few short years. The original book is actually quite a bit different from the more mainstream version of the characters, and I’ve enjoyed the bits of it I’ve read, both by the original creators and several of those who came in later.

Couple of amusing little Bean references in TMNT #15 from 1988. In the story, by Peter Laird and Jim Lawson, the Turtles visit a comic book shop, and one of them scores a great find:

And on the back cover there’s a painting of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird and their creations in a very cluttered studio, full of great stuff including some artwork on the wall, such as this:

Slightly more nebulous, but the robotic villains of the story, seen below, have certain design elements which suggest Marder style Beans.

The in-story reference is presumably present on the many reprints this story has likely seen in the last two decades. I don’t know if the back cover has ever been reprinted.

Thanks to Bean Spotter extraordinaire Shield Bonnichsen for pointing these out and providing the scans.

Marder-ography – Hey #7 [1989]

Back here I linked to an auction for the original art to a bizarre jam piece by Larry Marder, David Tosh, Denis Kitchen, Don Simpson, Bill Sienkiewicz, Mark Stokes and Mark David Dietz. Thanks to friend of the blog Shield Bonnichsen, I now have some images from the publication of that story “Turn Left at the Light” in HEY #7.

First, the Marder panel in question:

And the full page it appears on, and the Crumb tribute cover by David Tosh (click for full sized images, nudity and language warnings apply):

Look for some more rarities provided by Shield in the future.