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David Avallone's Writer's Commentary on Bettie Page Unbound #7 – 'Drunk On Two-Page Spreads'

Published Tue, 17 Dec 2019 10:30:05 -0600

David Avallone has his Writer's Commentary on Bettie Page Unbound #7 from Dynamite, out now. If you have one you'd like to share, get in touch. He writes,

You know the drill: SPOILERS GALORE below. (Spoilers Galore is my favorite Ian Fleming villain.)

Covers: John Royle narrowly avoids the Mouse's lawyers with a fun Bettie-as-Maleficent cover, and – dare I say? – an Elvira-esque costume on our hero. (Colors by Sebastian Cheng.) Scott Chantler pays tribute to one of my favorite movies, with Bettie (and some woefully inadequate handcuffs) preparing to arrest Kong. Meanwhile, David Williams does Bettie-as-Fleisher-Brothers-Superman… another big favorite of mine. Vincenzo Federici has a great cover of Bettie living La Dolce Vita. As always, every one of these covers suggests a comic I want to write. Maybe someday…

Page 1: To start things off: meet Kewber Baal. We really wanted to tie up this series on schedule, so we're going to employ some fill-in artists to help meet the demands. Editor Kevin Ketner found Kewber, and I couldn't be happier with his work in this issue. (I'm told Dynamite immediately grabbed him up for something else.) Kewber is amazing: his style is his own, but I think it meshes well with Julius' work on the series. His portraits of Bettie really capture her essence, and he handles all the unique challenges of this crazy issue quite well. Also… while we only ever communicated by email, he was delightful to work with. Thanks, Kewber! Of course, our usual talented team of Taylor Esposito on letters and Ellie Wright on colors keeps everything as consistent as possible.

Picking up where Julius left off… we're in the nightmarish Hive of the Bee People from Outer Space. (I give them a more dignified name later.) I wrote a bunch of chittering gibberish in the script, but told Taylor to please come up with some alien looking alphabet to replace my cheesy noises. He did beautifully, as always. And the whole issue has this sickly amber hue that I asked for in the script, and Ellie delivered perfectly.

Pages 2 & 3: Am I a little drunk on two-page spreads these days? Maybe. When epic circumstances demand it, I really love using them. Kewber doesn't disappoint here.

Pages 4 & 5: I wanted to let the surroundings really sink in, so Bettie thinks – and narrates – while we get a look at the Hive. I suggested a cross between alien tech and a more organic-beehive look. I think the combination looks cool.

Pages 6 & 7: Bettie's been in some tight spots before… this might be the worst. I was worried, after the epic saga of the first five issues, if this second arc would be big enough. After all, in the Crisis on Infinite Betties, the whole multiverse was at risk. I decided that the only way to make this "bigger" was to make it more personal. The multiverse will be fine, but Bettie's very humanity is in danger. Those are the stakes this time.

Page 8: This is an important page, and one I thought about for a long time. I hadn't planned to "go here" particularly, but the story took me in this direction and there was no turning back.

Bettie Page, the real-life woman, had an incredibly hard life. There was a lot of fun and glamor, and that's mostly what we remember her for… but on the other hand, everything on this page really happened to her. Some of it is pretty clear, some of it is intentionally more shadowy.

The aliens are probing her mind, and they find all the painful stuff. I know I always try to keep these commentaries light and funny – same with the comic – but here I had to make a choice, and I chose honesty and reality over fantasy, even in these sci-fi settings. Bettie Page was abused by her father. Her mother tossed her and her sisters in an orphanage. Her first husband did try to kill her with a knife. And that last panel… she was sexually assaulted by a car full of men when she first moved to New York City. If you want to hear her talk about all this stuff, in her own words, I recommend (as always) the documentary BETTIE PAGE REVEALS ALL. She's blunt and clear about what she lived through, but she's a survivor. That's the point of this page, and the next, and maybe the point of every comic I'll ever write about her.

Page 9: You go where the story takes you, and sometimes you think about what you – reading as a fan – would want to see. Me? If I read those first four issues of this series I'd be a little disappointed if I never saw Red Bettie, VampiBettie, Dejah Bettie and Tinkerbettie ever again. This seemed like a great place to bring them back, as avatars of her strength, and of all the ways in which she's grown over the course of our series. Don't be too surprised if they pop up again. I love these characters.

Pages 10 & 11: The series is called BETTIE PAGE UNBOUND, folks. So here she is breaking her bounds. I'm nothing if not literal. I went back and forth with Kewber a bit on the shape of the hole in the wall of Bettie's cell. I wanted it to be less, um, something. I'm not sure I succeeded, but we can call it symbolism if we like.

Page 12: They don't only snatch Betties. But you saw that coming, right? The old Ray Harryhausen film MYSTERIOUS ISLAND has a sequence set inside a giant beehive. When I was a kid it terrified me. That probably inspired all of this. I never mentioned that to Kewber, but somehow it ended up getting there anyway.

Pages 13,14 & 15: I wanted this to feel like one of those dreams where you keep running and you can't get anywhere, and your pursuers are right behind you. Kewber does a great job with the action and terror of it all, ably supported by Ellie's creepy amber glow and Taylor's evocative alien language and sound effects.

Pages 16 & 17: It's all fun and games until they start shooting ray guns at you. I do love the Air Patrolman's hat flying off when he fires the blaster.

Pages 18 & 19: A friend of mine once fell in the Potomac in January. (Long story. Alcohol was involved. Hi, Pete!) That may have inspired this sequence. Once again, though, Bettie just keeps pushing forward, fearlessly. Even if it means stealing from a Woolworths.

Page 20: The big reveal. Another Bettie? Possibly an EVIL Bettie, though it's not like she has a neat little Van Dyke beard to confirm. Come back next issue, for my Hitchcock/John Carpenter mash-up in INVASION OF THE BETTIE SNATCHERS, CHAPTER THREE!

As always… acknowledgment 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!

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