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David Avallone's Writer's Commentary on Bettie Page Unbound #8 – "Henchmen Aren't What They Seem"

Published Mon, 06 Jan 2020 09:30:59 -0600

David Avallone's Writer's Commentary on Bettie Page Unbound #8, out from Dynamite now.

Did you have a nice holiday and/or holidays? Did you read Bettie Page Unbound #8? I want us to be able to talk about it freely, without fear of (whispering)… spoilers.

Covers: John Royle's Bettie-as-Barbarella reflects the sci-fi nature of the story, and once again I wish I had the time to write that specific comic. Scott Chantler recreates the ATTACK OF THE FIFTY FOOT WOMAN poster with Bettie swapped in, and a hilarious cameo from a popular Kaiju in the background.

Anthony Marques, J. Bone & Luis Antonio Delgado riff on the duplicate Bettie concept from the issue and the famous Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man meme. And Pasquale Qualano does Bettie in the classic James Bond costume and pose. She looks fantastic in a tuxedo. All great covers.

With this issue, we ran into some scheduling difficulties… and ended up with three artists on it, in order to make the print date. In the first volume of this comic, we had some similar problems and ended up with a few issues that had the art evenly split: one artist on pages 1-10, another on pages 11-20. Those comics do work, because of heroic efforts of the artists involved, but it was never – in my opinion – the ideal way to handle things. This time, I asked if I could choose more carefully who did what pages, and I think it all worked out great. Our talented letterer and colorist – Taylor Esposito and Ellie Wright — help to keep the quality and "look" consistent with previous (and future!) issues.

Pages 1, 2 & 3: This one takes place almost entirely on a train, from Washington D.C. to New York City. I love trains and train-travel, and have taken that particular trip a bunch of times over the years. In a general sense, I was thinking about the many great Hitchcock sequences on trains when I plotted it out.

The artist for pages one to thirteen is Matt Gaudio, who did some terrific work for us in the afore-mentioned volume one of BETTIE PAGE. Happy to have him back! He does a great job on our two Betties, making them distinct and yet both "Bettie."

Page 4: Bettie is without any friends or allies in this issue, so we spend a lot of time hearing her thoughts… and listening in as she tries to think her way out of this insane and dangerous situation. I always enjoy writing her diary/narration, and giving the reader a window into what she's really thinking and feeling.

Page 5: Bettie walks through the dining car and tries to get an innocent bystander to make a distraction, but it doesn't work. Sometimes there's a tendency (one I can be guilty of) to have every one of your hero's bright ideas bear some kind of fruit, and I always want to remind myself that sometimes you roll the dice and come up snake eyes.

Pages 6 & 7: Bettie probes the Praesepods for weakness. About the Praesepods: why bee-people? I wanted to give the aliens a simple and distinctive look. Insectoid aliens are a sci-fi trope, and we like to play around with tropes in this comic. Why bees? At the time I was conceiving this series I had recently put up a hummingbird feeder, and it was plagued with bees. (It took a week to figure out a solution without killing any bees: I found a little yellow "insect vacuum" that lets me scoop them up, walk a few blocks away, and shake them out over someone else's flower bed. But back to comic books…)

As for the name… I didn't think I could call them "Bee People From Outer Space" for five issues. I also didn't think that was a thing they'd call themselves. I used the usual lazy writer ways to come up with a name for an alien race. Words for "bee" in Latin and in foreign languages, for example. But Latin for bee is "apis" (meh). Googling and clicking around, I stumbled across a stellar formation called the Beehive Nebula. The Latin name of the Beehive Nebula is "Praesepe", and so… Praesepods.

Pages 8, 9 & 10: A little bee-Bettie-doppelganger action in the tight quarters of a luggage car. I particularly love the energy of the first kick that starts off the fight. After all the walking and talking it's a sharp burst of physical action.

Page 11: If you're counting bullets (and recognize the gun), you know Bettie continues to bluff her way through, even bleeding from a gunshot wound. That's my girl.

Page 12: The henchmen aren't what they seem. But you saw this coming, right?

Page 13: Bettie alone again with Anti-Bettie (as she was referred to in the script.) If you pay attention to this kind of thing, you might notice that the people who have been replaced by Praesepods (we'll later discover they're called Duplanoids) only very rarely have emphasis in their lettering. I was trying to convey the emotionless flatness of their delivery. But they perk up when they talk about the Next Evolution.

Page 14: In order to keep Julius Ohta available for all of issue ten, I had a budget of about ten pages between issues eight and nine. I thought long and hard about where I wanted to have Julius step in. On this page, with Bettie establishing mental contact with the Hive, and with the Praesepod Queen… I wanted Julius to have a hand designing their starships, and designing the Queen. I also thought that it was the perfect page to have another artist step in: a complete break from reality. As mentioned above, Ellie Wright does a great job maintaining artistic continuity with her colors.

Page 15: As we come back from the psychic break, we welcome a new artist, Pasquale Qualino, to our story. I thought the quick cut to Julius would provide a nice bridge to Pasquale's excellent work. He does a terrific job with our first priority: representing Bettie Page as she looked in 1952.

What does Anti-Bettie mean when she says "You are not human"? This is a story element that's been building since the beginning of this (third) volume of Bettie adventures. Bettie went to four parallel universes, "became" four different people… and we still don't quite know how that may have changed her in the long term.

Pages 16, 17 & 18: Bettie and Anti-Bettie duke it out. Pasquale brings the action here, in what feels like a challenging scene to draw.

Pages 19 & 20: For the last two pages, we return to Julius Ohta… largely because I love the way he draws Jericho and Althea Druke, and I thought it would be nice to let him draw them for the end of this issue.

The gent in the dining car was inspired by the character Oscar Shapely in the classic movie IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT. Shapely was played by the great character actor Roscoe Kerns, so… here he's "Roscoe." (Karns tries to pick up Claudette Colbert when they're fellow passengers on a bus.)

On page twenty, having Bettie and Jericho reflected in the drone's eye was Julius' idea and it works beautifully to give us our cliffhanger for the next exciting issue. Bettie and the Drukes are going to need more than my bee vacuum to get out of this. Stay tuned for INVASION OF THE BETTIE SNATCHERS, CHAPTER FOUR, coming soon!

As always… acknowledgement and thanks to Kevin Ketner for his full-service editing, and Joe Rybandt and Nick Barrucci for letting me play in their sandbox.

See you next time!