In October, a collection of my 2015 series for BOOM! Studios, Abigail and the Snowman, which I both wrote and drew, will be hitting stores. I'm printing up a small run of them to be released in September at the Small Press Expo (SPX) in Bethesda, Maryland, and I'll be selling them through my website,, as well, from that date. RL: I've recently completed an online graphic novel featuring my Fred the Clown character, called The Iron Duchess. Along the way we get musical numbers, goofy gags and all the stuff you'd expect from a Fleischer cartoon.īB: Roger, are there any projects you'd like to mention in which you may be involved outside Betty Boop? Some mischievous spirits want to take over Grampy and Betty's home, and it's up to Betty and her friends to stop them. RL: Well, in the spirit of the creepy weirdness of the original cartoons, and also because October means Halloween, it's a ghost story. I like to think we're assimilating those influences and building something new from them, without losing their essential character.īB: Can you tell us anything about the story(ies) for #1, coming out in October? I don't think either of us are slavishly copying those sources, though there's a danger of making something that seems awfully dated by doing that, and we want it to be somewhat fresh and modern as well, even if our stories are set in a kind of 1930s world. I know Gisèle looked at the films, as well as previous Betty Boop comics, as part of her research. RL: I mainly went to the original Fleischer cartoons as my source of inspiration. It's an intrinsic part of the Betty Boop brand as far as I'm concerned.īB: Did you and/or artist Gisele Lagace do research on Betty's previous incarnations? And if so, what? One of the main settings for our stories is "The Oop-A-Doop Club", a nightclub where Betty works, and I've dragged her and the rest of the cast into that seedy underworld from the cartoons as often as possible. And we've got Bimbo, Koko the Clown, Sally Swing, Pudgy and Grampy all present and correct.īB: Fleischer's toons always had Betty (and Popeye) inhabiting, as you say, very realistic, rough worlds of speak-easies and disheveled urban streets. RL: I've done my best! There are rights issues to work around, so Cab Calloway doesn't appear directly, but there's a character called "Scat Skellington" who's highly reminiscent of the jazz legend. So, yeah - lifelong fan.īB: Will we see any of the iconic characters from Betty's "films" in the book? As an adult I made comics in which I tried to evoke that Fleischer world - one story in particular, "Scared Witless", featuring my Fred the Clown character, was an out-and-out tribute to the Fleischers. It was definitely not cute, or safe much more a fun-house mirror version of the adult world, with jazz music, references to prohibition-era booze, and an undercurrent of sexuality. I saw a few here and there over the next few years - occasionally on TV, or at film festivals - and I was increasingly fascinated by the world they evoked. It was really bizarre - and, for that reason, intriguing.
#Catoon artist betty boop original tv#
RL: Very much so! I remember seeing one of the classic Betty Boop shorts, Snow White, on TV when I was a child.
I think there were some rights issues to be worked out before I could begin, but some months later the project was given the green light and off we went.īB: Were you a fan of the classic Max Fleischer toons? ROGER LANGRIDGE: I was asked nicely! Joseph Rybandt approached me a while back to ask me if I was interested in the character, based on the fact that I'd previously worked on that other great Fleischer Studios icon, Popeye. Covers are by Howard Chaykin, series artist Gisele Lagace and Langridge himself.īYRON BREWER: Is any cartoon property more iconic than Betty Boop? Roger, tell us how you came to do this legendary character's new book from Dynamite. Former Popeye writer Roger Langridge will be writing the new series for Dynamite and talked with Byron Brewer about the direction for the comic and just what form the original cartoons we're going to see. A Fleischer Studios character that embodies the prohibition era through speakeasies and jazz music. One of the classic cartoon characters of all time is Betty Boop.
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