Hoka-Hoka Jeff Smith!

Oh man.

In all the excitement of the last few weeks, I've overlooked something very important.
Time to fix that.

I want to thank my ol' pal, Jeff Smith, creator of BONE and RASL, for writing the introduction to "Remember Here When You Are There!"

While we were working on the first hardcovers, I told my editor, Diana Schutz, that it was my dream to have Jeff write the intro to my comeback book.
She agreed. Great idea!

However, I confess I was a bit nervous asking Jeff for this favor.
Even though we have known each other for a very long time, I know how busy he is and how many requests of this sort he gets on an almost daily basis.
So I waited until the very last moment to ask.

How last moment?

Uh...Diana writing and saying that solicitations are due now and and asking if Jeff going to write the intro so it can be solicited properly.

Uh-oh.
That's what I get for being so procrastinatingly shy.

So I wrote and asked Jeff, and asked him if he could find the time to do it, and how I really regretted waiting until the last possible moment to do so.

His answer was brief and to the point.

"Lar, if it wasn’t last minute, it wouldn’t be comics.
Of course I’ll write it. I wouldn’t let anybody else touch it!"

What guy!

I can not begin to tell you how wide my grin was when the piece came in and I read for the first time his words "Beanworld is a mixture of Krazy Kat, Tinker Toys, and Haiku… "

Cracked me up then, cracked me up just now.

So a very big Hoo-Hoo-HA & a Hoka-Hoka HEY to Jeff plus a hearty Wahoolazuma for the great news that The Cartoonist is going to be aired on PBS.

Oh yeah, the above drawing, as you can probably figure out, is from The Bean Book.

Look what arrived today!

Remember Here When You Are There!

An advance copy!

My thanks to Diana, Brendan, Tina, Matt, and the Dark Horse production crew
for making it look exactly like it is supposed to look.

Hey, Guess What?

Good news for Beanworld fans!

I completed "Remember Here When You Are There!" last night.

It clocked in at 212 pages of story which is a lot more than was expected (or solicited).
Beanworld has a way of taking over and who am I to argue with Beanworld?

The panel above is from page 181.

It's An I-Don't-Know-What-Day-It -Is-Anymore Teaser!

It's deadline crunch time here!

A panel from page 139 of
"Remember Here When You Are There!"

Beanworld Book Three.

An original graphic novel.

The Year's First Tuesday Tantalizing Teaser!

A finished panel from
"Remember Here When You Are There!"

There are quite few scenes inside Professor Garbanzo's Fix-It-Shop in this story.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2009!

Five years ago, on the cusp of 2004, New Year's Eve day 2003, Cory and I were on a vacation that went to the continent of Antarctica.


I had been injured in a silly fall in Chile a few days before the adventure ship, Explorer II, departed. I was misdiagnosed in a very small clinic in an even smaller town and thought I had only severely strained some ligaments. When I returned from the trip I found out, two and a half weeks after my fall, that I had actually ruptured my quadriceps tendon from my knee. After surgery it was an almost 4 month rehab. But I didn't know how seriously I was hurt and so, I went to Antarctica with a bum leg and a cane and somehow had an incredibly good trip all things considered.


During my recovery and rehab, I wrote the following in a letter to Heidi MacDonald who had asked about Antarctica:


an incredible three color world (black, white and cyan) very primal and ultra pristine. it might have been the combination of drugs and injury but i do believe i love antarctica more than africa--not something i would have believed possible!

we would disembark the ship and ferry to shore in zodiac rafts. in many places, once ashore, we had an extraordinary amount of freedom to roam, within common sense limits. obviously my mobility was often quite limited but i did manage to get around.

once, while the others hiked, i found myself sitting alone on a rocky beach, sitting on a boulder while resting my chin on my hands atop the head of my cane. i was gazing and contemplating the splendor of the landscape--black, jagged, glacier covered mountains (that reminded me of the Violator's teeth) descending directly into a bright calm sea. the bay itself was festooned with literally hundreds of fantastically shaped icebergs, pack ice and what they call burgy-bits under a cloudless sky.

then a very large, lone penguin came out of the water, waddled towards me. stopped not more than three feet away, cocked its head back and forth all the while looking me square in the eye for a good 10 seconds, gave a loud squawk, turned and went back into the water to join a group of about two dozen penguins that happened to be swimming by....now THAT moment will be with me for a VERY long time.


Moments after that extraordinary one-on-one experience with the penguin, I had a very strong thought echo in my brain. It wasn't a voice or anything, just a very strong message to myself from myself.


When I got back to the ship, I jotted this down:

as i sat on a rock i thought...remember when you are drawing there--the energy that was here.


As time passed, that simple note, distilled itself into a more simple message. I just knew that this was going to be the title of the story that had been called "Float Force" for so many years. I wrote it down on a big yellow Post-It note and put it on the wall above my drawing board in Phoenix a few years ago.

It's still above my board, to the left. And I'm deep, deep, DEEP in this story now. Having the time of my life. Lately I find myself amazed at how strongly Beanworld is channeling itself through my stylus and into comic book pages. I'm having FUN folks and I'm hoping that when you read this story towards the end of the year, that you will have fun too.

As some variation of the old saying goes "If it don't rain too hard and the crick don't rise" 2009 is gonna be the year of "Remember Here When You Are There!"