Posted in: Comics | Tagged: betty boop, Comics, dynamite, entertainment, Gisèle Lagacé, roger langridge

"A Plucky Female Character Fighting Ghosts" – Roger Langridge Talks Betty Boop

Published Mon, 22 Aug 2016 15:00:19 -0500

Betty Boop is a classic cartoon character created by Max Fleischer with help from a cartoonist named Grim Natwick in the 1930 as a caricature of the Jazz-Age Flappers. Now Dynamite has is giving Betty her own comic series written by Roger Langridge and drawn by Gisele Lagace. I got a chance to talk to Langridge about the new series and writing a character who is based in an era from 86 years ago.

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?

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. I've always had a fascination for the slightly down-at-heel, seedy world they evoke. 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!).

DW: I get the impression this is going to be kind of an anthology series. What is the overall theme for the series and how does that compare to the original stories and how does it differ?

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. Our stories are still stand-alone, but are designed to hold together as a collection as well. 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. 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. 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 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!

DW: Betty Boop was famously changed in 1938 because of the Hays Code, making her design slightly demurer. Which version of the character are you going with?

RL: The good old original, of course! Hays Code, Comics Code – they're all ancient history.

DW: 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?

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. 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. 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.

DW: When I saw the announcement, one of the things that shocked me was the Howard Chaykin cover. He's not really known for doing more animated looking characters. What was your reaction the first time you saw the cover?

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. If you're gonna do variant covers, at least use them for interesting, alternative takes like that.

DW: Unlike other Fleisher creations, Betty Boop has been on the shelves for a very long time. Why do you think she's been neglected so long and what makes now the right time to bring her back?

RL: Well, a plucky female character fighting ghosts, what's not topical about that?! Seriously, though, I can't think of any other major Fleischer creations besides Betty Boop! The other characters they're known for, Popeye and Superman, both originated elsewhere. But perhaps the reason she's been in mothballs for a while is because an explicitly male fantasy of a woman like Betty Boop – an archaic idea of one, at that – is quite a hard sell in this day and age. I believe, by bringing Gisele on board, we've taken the curse off that aspect of the character somewhat; Gisele's own comics are also pretty sexy, but from a female perspective, so her sensibility should go some way towards rectifying that issue. And I've bent over backwards with the scripts to give Betty some sense of agency and not to have her become a passive character. Without losing anything essential about the character, we both want Betty to feel like she's relevant to the 21st century.

It appears Dynamite aren't the only ones who think it's time for Betty Boop to make a comeback, though; according to the IMDB, there's a Betty Boop project "in development". What the specifics of that are, I have no idea, but it appears there's something in the air that makes the time right!

DW: So finally, sell the book to the readers. In a sentence or two, tell me what fans will get when they pick up this series.

RL: What will you get? You'll get laughs! Ghosts! Prohibition-era jazz! Seedy nightclubs! Adventure! Romance! Some sweet, sweet artwork! And one of the most iconic cartoon characters of all time!

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