Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Saturday Nite Flier!

Here is the other flier I referred to in my last post. Looking at it today, within the context of what we know about Beanworld continuity, you might find it as odd as I do. I reprinted it in the trade paperback Larry Marder's Beanworld:Book One but really have never discussed it much before.
As you may recall, the purpose of this handbill was to pique retailer interest in a Beanworld comic that was (hopefully) coming through the distribution pipeline sometime in an ill-defined near future.
First oddity is the reference to "Saturday Nite." As we all know now, the Beans only have two designation of days--Sprout-Butt Day and Goof-Off Day. But at the time the potential reader had absolutely no idea of any of that!
Lead Guitar Boom'r is missing in action. I have no idea why. Maybe for the room.

Professor Garbanzo is there but not Mr. Spook. An odd choice because Mr. Spook always gets a lot of attention. Maybe I wasn't quite aware of that yet.
Beanish, however, is there...that's peculiar because he doesn't appear in Beanworld until issue 4!

And the joke. The lima bean with a TM next to it actually was my comic book trademark in 1984. At the time, I was a fairly well known letter hack to comic book letter columns. I always did two things: I signed all my mail with the signature Larry "Beanworld" Marder and I always adorned any and all correspondence with everyone in the comic book field with a hand drawn bean with a TM in the lower left hand corner like the one on the left here.
The joke itself--the transformation of a Bean into a bean--goes back a long way. I probably drew that the first time as early as 1973 or so. Now that I think about it, this might have actually been the last time I drew it.
It certainly prefigures Beanworld action figures and foreshadows the cover of Beanworld #1.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

So, does Beanish's rotatedness as a TM-bean represent his status as the artist or something?

Unknown said...

Perhaps Lead Guitar Boom'r was doing a costume change, a'la KISS or Alice Cooper?

Anonymous said...

On a totally unrelated subject, When the new Beanworld collections come out, are they going to include, well, EVERYTHING?

For example, are the stories from Asylum going to be in there?

Larry Marder said...

Everything, including "While we were eating," the ASYLUM story, but redone in glorious black and white.