RL: I loved it! It's actually a pretty good fit, I think Howard is known for drawing sexy characters in stockings, and Betty is pretty much the archetypical sexy character in stockings. What was your reaction the first time you saw the cover? He's not really known for doing more animated looking characters. But of course it's enormously helpful to have the artist's style in your head as you write and Gisele has designed our villains and supporting characters – basically anybody who isn't straight out of the cartoons – from scratch, and all the characters are being 'acted' by her, so her sensibility is a crucial part of it.ĭW: When I saw the announcement, one of the things that shocked me was the Howard Chaykin cover. Once Gisele came on board, I asked her if there was anything in particular she'd like to tackle art-wise, but other than expressing her enthusiasm for the Halloween-type stuff I'd been writing up until that point, she seemed happy for me to keep on doing what I'd been doing. RL: I wrote the first couple of issues before an artist had been assigned to the series, so my 'mental artist' was basically myself on those. RL: The good old original, of course! Hays Code, Comics Code – they're all ancient history.ĭW: What is the working process like with Gisele Lagace? Does she have any input on the story and do you have any input on the art being an artist yourself? Which version of the character are you going with?

Betty will get a few inches closer to attaining her dreams as the series progresses – though not so close that another series is off the table, of course!ĭW: Betty Boop was famously changed in 1938 because of the Hays Code, making her design slightly demurer. They tend to break into musical numbers at the drop of a hat, and there's a Cab Calloway surrogate called Scat Skellington hanging around… Hopefully all the essential ingredients from the cartoons are present and correct, but given a dust-off and a lick of paint to make them hold together over four issues. Betty has a waitressing job at a nightclub where she dreams of becoming a star, and where she works alongside Bimbo and Koko the Clown. So the frequent ghostly characters Betty would come up against in the films are consistent, recurring villains, with a particular goal – to take over Betty's grandfather's house and turn it into a supernatural speakeasy. Our stories are still stand-alone, but are designed to hold together as a collection as well. RL: I'm basically taking the Betty Boop ingredients and trying to turn them into something consistent that will work as a series, as the original cartoons tended to be stand-alone stories that were not necessarily connected to one another. What is the overall theme for the series and how does that compare to the original stories and how does it differ?

In fact, the Fleischer style was the basis of one of the stories I did with my own Fred the Clown character, 'Scared Witless' it was heavily influenced by the Fleischer short 'Bimbo's Initiation', which features one of the earliest Betty Boop appearances (when she still had dog ears!).ĭW: I get the impression this is going to be kind of an anthology series. I've always had a fascination for the slightly down-at-heel, seedy world they evoke.

ROGER LANGRIDGE: I haven't seen every single Betty Boop short, by any means, but I was familiar enough with the original cartoons, having seen them throughout my life on TV and at film festivals and what-have-you. DAN WICKLINE: Most people know the name Betty Boop and recognize her as one of the first animated sex symbols or as an icon from the age of Jazz and prohibition, but how familiar were you with the actual films that were made by Fleisher Studios?

Betty boop ghost