What exactly WAS this Total Eclipse stuff?

If page 57 of “A Gift Comes!” (seen above) left you scratching your head for a few moments before moving onto the next story elements, well, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.

It’s a recap of a series of events that took place outside of the pages of Tales of the Beanworld in a mini-series called Total Eclipse that kicked off as a cliffhanger ending in Tales of the Beanworld #10.

Beanish appeared in issues #3-5 of the series. I wrote extensively about it in the third volume of the old trade paperback series and you can read a reformatting of the original essay here. You can increase the size of the pages by hitting the little “All Sizes” magnifying glass above. Then you can make it quite large by clicking on "Large" or "Original Size."

In the essay, I make reference to my original intent regarding Tim Truman's Scout making a literal possible pop up cameo. It kinda made sense because the beans had made a previous cameo in Scout #17.

The drawing at the left is from my sketch book at the time. It's dated 2/7/88. That's a long time ago.
As you will read about, this particular idea fell by the wayside.

A point of interest: the line “Don’t come any closer!” was culled from from The Treasure of Sierra Madre and was part of a sound montage frequently played on Steve and Garry, my favorite radio show at the time. (Everyone of a certain age and time in Chicago will know what I’m talking about!)
It was a place holder for actual dialogue to come later.

Over at Are You A Serious Comic Book Reader, Karen Peltier blogged a very comprehensive overview of both Total Eclipse and Scout #17.

A hearty "Wahoolazuima!" to Karen for her keen observations. She even made me think about a few things I hadn't considered before.

Hopefully all of these things will add a little sunlight to a very opaque sequence!