Like the first sprouts of spring, this year marks a rebirth for Larry Marder and his much-loved series, Tales From the Beanworld. Newly liberated after 14 years spent working for Image Comics and McFarlane Toys, Marder will deliver the first new installment in fifteen years, a Christmas special, to be followed by re-issues of the complete series up to this point, and ultimately a brand new graphic novel, all published by Dark Horse.

In this third and final part of our interview with Marder, we discuss the genesis of the beans, his early days of self-publishing, and how, after all these years, he finally found a new home for his “most peculiar comic book experience.

[Part One][Part Two]

Who published Tales From the Beanworld, early on?

This was published through Eclipse Comics, which was an important indie publisher in the 80s. I think they went belly up two or three months after my last issue of Beanworld came out. I never really intended to take a hiatus. What happened was, I had been publishing it on a fairly regular basis, and then there was a two-year hiatus. I put out two books, within a couple of months of each other, and then I got hired by Image. Eclipse went under when I first got there, and I just got sidetracked. I never intended to take that time off. But fifteen years goes by in an eye-blink.

Did you have any trouble finding a home for the work?

No, I was incredibly blessed. In the hardcover book that’s coming out in February, the first story was the first comic book I ever drew. Everything got published in that order. I’m incredibly lucky. Now, it took me forever to figure out how to write that book, but I didn’t have any trouble at all, in terms of publishing. It’s an interesting story. In ’83, I had essentially the first issue of Beanworld. I had it altogether, one side of Xeroxes, put together with a paperclip, and I handed them out to the people I respected at the Chicago Comic Con. The person who wrote me back was Jim Shooter, who was the editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics. He told me, “this is really weird and really good. Stick with it.” And that was enough for me.

But I’m not going to publish it…

No, no. Especially not in those days. And besides, they would have owned it. But anyway, Jim was a big supporter of me, early on, for which I am really thankful. And the fact that he didn’t try to publish it, I’m also really thankful. The following year, I had gotten that much farther that I had put together little booklets, 11 x 17, with a staple, folded in half, and I handed it out with a self-addressed, stamped envelope, and I handed those out at the Chicago Comic Con. And the second person that responded to it was Cat Yronwode, who was the editor-in-chief of Eclipse Comics.

She also wrote a column in the Comics Buyer’s Guide, which was a big deal, in those days. She said that “this guy is self-publishing, and I don’t really get it, but send a self-addressed stamp envelope and some money, and he’ll send you a comic.” And all of the sudden, I’m getting tons of money and people wanting to see these books. I actually marketed myself by sending free samples, these little eight-page books that were full chapters. I’d send a package of four, five, or six of these basically over-sized mini-comics—though we didn’t really know what mini-comics were, back then. And I sent those out to people and said, if you fill out this questionnaire—I called it “The Bean Poll”—I’ll send you the next issue.

I sent those to people who had full names in letter columns in the books I liked. So that was X-men, Cerebus, Elf Quest, and things like that. And, all of the sudden, I was sending out like $30 worth of stuff. Out of all of that, when Cat Yronwode realized that I was a marketing person, they wanted some help with their marketing, and they basically said, if you help us with our marketing, we’ll distribute your comic book for free. That was the handshake relationship that we had for 21 issues, until they went under. And I wouldn’t be here without Cat Yronwode and Dean Mullaney.

But then I went into the business and blah, blah, blah. But one of those people that I sent one of those booklets to—and when those booklets come up on eBay, they go for an arm and a leg—was Diana Schutz, who was, at that time, the editor of The Telegraph Wire, which was the in-house news magazine for Comics and Comics, which was a chain in San Francisco. She’s been a friend, ever since, and she’s my in at Dark Horse.

You mentioned that the first issue you had published of Beanworld was the first you ever produced. How fully formed was this world, when you first started?

I came up with the Beans in like early ’72. The first story that made any sense was in 1980. I had a lot of false starts. It took me a long time to figure things out. The character of Mr. Spook, who is the hero, he was developed very early on. The other ones went through a lot of incarnations. It took a while before everything fell into place the way that it fits together now.

In light of the major gaps in production of the book, how has Beanworld evolved since to beginning?

I’m older, I’m wiser, I’m a better artist. I think I’m a tighter storyteller. I don’t dwell on things, as much as I used to. I used to worry about whether everyone was understanding everything that I was doing, so I explained a lot. I’m glad I did that, but I’m not dwelling on that kind of stuff now.

It seems that, when something is such a labor of love, you can almost just write for yourself. Is that what you find yourself doing, these days?

These characters write themselves. Back when I tried to write it—I know this sounds insane. Every cartoonist says this, but it’s really true. It’s almost like they’re saying to me, “are you kidding me? I don’t do that.” And when they do that, it just breaks down like a car running out of gas. I wake up and look at it the next day, and it’s not working.

–Brian Heater

After nearly a decade of sporadic releases, Tales from the Beanworld ceased publication in 1993.  Since then, the series’ creator Larry Marder has kept himself fairly busy, first as the executive director of Image Comics and then as the president of McFarlane Toys, a role he held for almost eight years.

In 2007, Marder quit his job at Todd McFarlane’s toy company, vowing to return to the Beanworld, after a decade-and-a-half’s hiatus. Next year Dark Horse will reissue the long out-of-print story and Marder will release a volume of all new material.

We spoke to Marder at this year’s Small Press Expo in Bethesda. In this second part, we discuss Beanworld’s all ages appeal, the genesis of his ideas, and how the artist’s time with the Image crew has affected his work.

[Part One]

It’s interesting that the story seems to have such a resonance with readers, because it takes place in an entirely different universe. Do you think that hurts or helps the book, in terms of personal connections?

It’s a hindrance when I’m trying to explain it. I’ve seen it a million times, especially with little kids. They’ll pick it up and read a page or two and then put it down, or else they’ll read the entire volume at once and say, “gimme more.”

It’s this way for kids of all ages?

It seems to be, to me, that seven or eight is when a kid can really wrap its head around it. I think there are parents that read it to their children at a far younger age. That’s one of the things that I noticed, when I was doing this, a while back. The entry level for Beanworld, to make their head explode was 11, and it seems to be eight now. I don’t know what to attribute that to. Are kids smarter? Are they more media-savvy? Are the big ideas contained in Beanworld more accessible to them? But it seems to be eight now. But I don’t write it for anybody. I just write it for myself. It’s not a kids book.

But there’s nothing overtly offensive in it.

No. There’s some violence.

Nothing more than a cartoon, though.

No. But the relationship between the beans and the Hoi-Polloi is not a friendly one. They’re definitely adversarial. But it all makes sense in the fact that they maintain their food chain in their adversarial relationship.

When you’re sitting on a plane and one of those aforementioned ideas pops into your head, is it more abstract? Is it a little piece of a story?

All of the above. Sometimes somebody will say something in the plane, or I’ll be thinking about something, or I’ll be laughing about something, and it will just convert—transmogrify in my head—and it’s like, ‘that would be cool if my character Professor Garbanzo said that.’ I can make that work within the Beanworld context. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I know what leads into it and what leads out of it.

Is the goal to tackle these large ideas? Are you just trying to push the story forward?

No, the goal is just to tell the story. I started telling the Beanworld story over 30 years ago, and I know what the signposts are. I know where the stops are. I know where it’s going, but I have no idea how I meander. That’s where the fun is.

When he’s talking about Bone, Jeff Smith always says that he had the exact image of the book’s final page in his head when he started. Does Beanworld have that definite an end?

Yeah. It’s winter and everyone dies. I said that in a book, or in a letter column, or something. Beanworld is set to the pace and rhythms and poetry of vegetable life. The original books, Tales of the Beanworld, plus Remember Here, When You Are There, which is next year’s graphic novel, will conclude what I consider the springtime cycle. I will then follow that with what I consider the summer cycle, the autumnal cycle, and then winter comes, everything dies, and then the follow year, it regenerates. It’s the poetry of being plants. This particular year, something went horribly wrong. All of the adventures of this year are about everyone trying to figure out what went wrong, and how to correct it. The more they correct it, the worse things get.

Since Darkhorse is printing the books now, it seems like you’ve gotten back into things, full bore. I know you were working with McFarlane and Image for a while, which probably took away from your ability to work on Beanworld full-time. Have there been points where you really doubted your ability to reach the end of the cycle?

Of, for sure. In fact, I think you would find that most people, except for my wife, believed that, until recently. I wasn’t sure that I was ever going to get back to it, and then, all of the sudden, it seemed really important for me to get back to it. But yeah, five years ago, I’m not sure that I knew I really would, and then, all of the sudden, I knew that I really had to. I can’t really explain that, except to say that the urge to continue this became overwhelming, and I just had to make sure that that actually happened.

What did your wife know that no one else did?

She knew that I couldn’t stay way from this forever.

What were you doing for Todd McFarlane?

I ran Image Comics from 1993 to 1999. I was there during the crazy years. And then I was the president of McFarlane Toys from 1999 to 2007. The hierarchy was Todd McFarlane and then me. I was there for seven years, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I had six good years, and then one when it was less interesting and less fun for really silly reasons—the way the business was run in China, the demands of the economy on retailers wanting the prices to remain low. It was, for me, increasingly less fun, and there was no point in me staying there.

Beyond putting a strain on your time, did working on that side of things have any noticeable effect on your work?

You know, I think I’m a better storyteller. I’m a much more concise storyteller, having come out of this 15-year journey. Before that, I was an art director in the advertising business—b2b. I was a pretty good storyteller from that, but I wasn’t around cartoonists, and I wasn’t talking to them. And then, all of the sudden, I was at the at the top of the food chain, talking comics with Jim Lee, Mark Silvestri, Todd McFarlane, Valentino—who is a hell of a storyteller—and then all of the sudden I’m publishing Jeff Smith, Sergio Argones, Brian Michael Bendis, and Gene Yang’s first book. So, it was really fun to have a relationship to those guys and holding people’s hands, as they were first starting out. I did a lot of stuff that I was really proud of, and having conversations with those guys about those sorts of things, I think made me better.

[Concluded in Part Three]

–Brian Heater

Fifteen years ago, Larry Marder was appointed the executive director of the upstart comic publisher, Image. After a half-dozen years in that role, he joined up with Image co-founder Todd MacFarlane, as the president of the Spawn creator’s action figure company, MacFarlane Toys, a position he maintained until last year.

An artist in his own right, Marder’s most beloved creation, Tales From the Beanworld, largely languished as he busied himself with the task of helping run two international entertainment companies.

At this year’s Stumptown in Portland, however, Marder announced that he would be resurrecting his most popular creation, beginning with reissues of the long out-of-print books, arriving via Dark Horse, next year. Following a reissue of the book’s complete run, Dark Horse will release all new Beanworld material, written and drawn by Marder.

We had the opportunity to sit down with Marder at SPX in Maryland, a few weeks back, to discuss his return to alternative comics and the rebirth of Beanworld.

What’s coming out on Dark Horse?

The Beanworld Holiday Special is coming out—it’s 24 pages of new stuff, and it’s in the Diamond catalog, right now. It’s coming out December 17th. It will be followed by the first hardcover that’s re-presenting all of the old material. That’s coming out in February. The old material will be complete with the second hardcover volume, which will come out in the beginning of Summer. That will be followed in the Fall of 2009 with a 200+  page black and white graphic novel, which is what I’m working on, right now.  It’s 250 pages, picking up exactly where the first two book leave off. It’s the original Beanworld continuity, which is being re-scanned and re-packaged for today’s audience.

These first two volumes have been out of print for a while.

A long time. Of all the 21 issues that I did of Beanworld, which was enough for five volumes, in the old format, I only actually published four. So the last five or six issues of Beanworld have never been re-printed, so they will be in the second volume. That will take care of everything that’s ever been done, except for some odds and ends, which will be collected at some point later. So it’s all going to be back in print again, after having been out of print for well over 10 years.

Have you been working on it for yourself consistently, since then?

Yeah. I’ve been shuffling around. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle or a mosaic. I’ve been connecting little pieces constantly, but didn’t really understand how to connect them all into this grand story.

Pieces like characters and storylines?

I’d be on a plane or have jetlag—I’d be in Hong Kong or China, when I was in the toy business—and I’d just have a flash of something, so I’d sit down and pencil it. Maybe it would be two frames, or maybe it would be three pages, and then that would be it. It would just be a little flash, and I didn’t understand how it would connect to any other of the pieces. And then, about two years ago, I just sort of collected all of the pieces, and I actually found, in my own archives, a bunch of story fragments that were clipped together in a certain order.

It was like I had done this, 10, 12 years ago, to say, “hey Larry, you’re going to forget about all of this, but some day in the future, you’re gonna find this. This is what you intended, but you’re about to forget,” and I did. And then, all of the sudden, I found all of that stuff, and the pieces that I had been doing sort of slotted in, and I just figured out what the proper order was. I used to say that I didn’t have a beginning and I didn’t have an end—I had nothing but endless middle. And then the beginning and the end came to me very quickly, and it became easy to fill in the gaps.

Is it a fluid story, throughout?

Yeah. It is a continuity that stands alone. I was always a big believer in the old-fashioned comic book rule, which I learned from Jim Shooter, but I think it actually came from Jules Schwartz, which is, “every issue is somebody’s first issue.” Which is why every couple of issues they would show Krypton blowing up and Kal-El going off on a rocket. I was always very influenced by that. What’s funny—and Jeff Smith observed this, a long time ago—is that, when they’re collected, there’s a rhythm to the story being retold again, and it almost has a refrain aspect to it, that I like. But it’s a free-standing continuity, and yet, it’s more like a soap opera, where I’m always adding something new, while reinforcing something that’s old.

The experience I had with Bone—and I’m sure a lot of people share this—was that it didn’t do much for me, when I sat down and read the first few issues. It didn’t really hit me, until I read the full collected volume. Do you think Beanworld is like that?

This is a build, absolutely. Well, actually, you know what, I’m the only person on the planet who will never have an idea what it’s like to read an issue of Beanworld, so I only know what people tell me, and what they tell me is that it tends to resonate and they think about it a lot, afterwards. Beanworld resonates and echoes with things in their own life. I suggest a lot of things, I throw out a lot of ideas, it operates on many levels, at the same time.

Like with [SPX], for example—I’ve run into a lot of people who are adults who started reading Beanworld when they were kids, and they have a completely different appreciation for it today than they did when they were 15. I think that that’s one of the peculiarities about Beanworld. Its tagline used to be ‘the most peculiar comic book experience,’ and I think that’s true, for most people. Beanworld is a comic book that can have a relationship with your entire life, like a Peanuts. I’m not trying to…

Compare yourself to Schulz…

Yeah, but the way that you react to it when you’re a kid is very different than the way you react to it, as an adult, and it really is very different. And the other thing I’ve noticed is that no one is indifferent to Beanworld. You either don’t like it or don’t get it, or you love it, so I tend to have very hardcore fans.

[Continued in Part Two.]

–Brian Heater