3 out of 5

Beanworld.

Beanworld.

…There’s so much to appreciate about Larry Marder’s odd doodles-turned-‘world’ creation.  It’s delightfully wacky, internally logical, willfully weird, and drawn with a comic simplicity that yet shows improvements in composition and pacing over the years.  But I’m not sure it’s a book I’ll ever really be able to get into, despite trying.  Perhaps it’s that nothing much of consequence ever occurs… though I read plenty of indies that do the same, like Dog Boy, but those are chock full of cynicism-tinged surrealness that occasionally lends itself to more than just blissed out mythology…  But I love what Marder has done with his little corner of the cartoon universe, since it is something pretty damned original, and I’m appreciative of the ‘rules’ he’s set in place that dictate things in Beanworld, even if it only amounts to silly stories like this Holiday Special, where we sort of get a refresher course on the different Bean functions and a sort of plot regarding the ‘cuties’ and the discovery that they don’t talk to one another (which is leveraged into a dash of attempted commentary on how to interact with children to effectively teach them behaviors).

It’s pretty awesome seeing all of this in bright and bold colors, which beam wonderfully off the page and are well chosen by Marder, but overall if this ‘special’ was meant as a way to interest new readers in Beanworld, it’s not the best… as the inside cover diagram of the world doesn’t do much to make sense of some of the weirdness one reads in the pages that follow, and its a little too cutesy-wutesy to read without the understanding that Marder has actually established all of this years ago and isn’t just making these words and characters up on the spot.

I think this can appeal to Aw Yeah! comics readers in its art style and story simplicity, or, of course, old school Beanworld followers, but it’s a rather inconsequential tale otherwise that doesn’t quite give a new reader enough knowledge to approach the contents with anything more than a confuddled smile.