Larry Marder’s
Tales of the Beanworld


Beanworld Ecology

Chow! The heart of Tales of the Beanworld is the Beanworld's ecology. Everyone has an important role to play in it.

The Beans' lives center around the collection of chow, their food. The Beanworld's chow cycle goes like this:

Gran'Ma'Pa - Sprout-Butt - Hoi-Polloi - chow - gunk'l'dunk

  1. Gran'Ma'Pa produces a Sprout-Butt.

  2. Mr. Spook and the Chow Sol'jer Army go on a chow raid. They steal chow from the Hoi-Polloi and leave the Sprout-Butt in its place.

  3. The Hoi-Polloi ring the Sprout-Butt, and it swells and ripens into a new batch of chow. The Hoi-Polloi use the new chow to replace the chow lost in the chow raid.

  4. The stolen chow is taken by the Beans to the Chowdown Pool, where it bubbles and burbles and becomes a nutrient bath for the Beans. Vitamins and nutrients are absorbed through the Beans' heads; trace minerals are soaked through the feet.

    It's chowdown time!
  5. Over time, the chowdown pool accumulates a layer of gunk on its floor. This is made into gunk'l'dunk.
A Sprout-Butt It's not really a cycle, sinced it's not closed. Sprout-Butts are made by Gran'Ma'Pa, and chow eventually ends up as gunk'l'dunk. For the Hoi-Polloi there's a balance; when the Chow Sol'jer Army steals chow, they always leave a Sprout-Butt to replace what they took.

Mr. Spook's trusty Fork sweetens Sprout-Butts. This makes the Sprout-Butt happy, and with the help of the Hoi-Polloi it becomes delicious chow. If a Sprout-Butt bounces too many times, it becomes crabby, and soaking in the chow it becomes is a private, smelly chore.

The balance can get out of whack. This happened in issue 2, Too Much Chow!.


THe Four Realities: slat, hoop, twink, chip Other parts of the Beanworld ecology are:



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