Previously, my entire exposure to Betty Boop was her bit in Roger Rabbit, although, like Star Wars and pop music, Betty Boop as a cultural-concept has long buried its way into my subconscious. Plus, like me, she has a middle part (in her hair), so I feel we should stick together (although my middle-part is a lot more Joey on Dawson’s Creek than Betty Boop). I’m also somewhat concerned, as I am with Wonder Woman, as to the state of Betty Boop’s back due to her mammary endowments. That and she’s apparently sixteen. I don’t really know if this:
is a good look for a sixteen year old. I mean, the Jazz Inspector, who is clearly an adult (and who calls the Jazz Police!), is hitting on her in a way that a grown man should not be hitting on a sixteen year old. Thankfully for all her questionably appropriate attire, Langridge’s Betty Boop never uses her sexuality as a performance: she’s a waitress who wants to be a singer and she just so happens to look like Betty Boop.
How much boob tape (Boop tape?) do you think someone needs to keep that dress up? My enquiring mind wants to know.
So this book is a collection of four Betty Boop comics, in which the Devil sends a lizard to try and steal Gramps’ house so that the Devil can claim Betty Boop’s innocent soul for his own and … well, it doesn’t work obviously (I guess that’s a spoiler, but this isn’t some gritty reboot of Betty Boop where Gramps is a junkie and she’s been sold into sex slavery or anything like that). It’s seems rather convoluted a premise, but maybe the old Betty Boop cartoons (again — all I know is this) are as wacky and convoluted. The whole thing read like watching a cartoon — when I think back to last night (when I read it before going to bed), it isn’t as if I read a book, but as if I watched cartoons. I like cartoons. And for all its silly twistiness, I liked this Betty Boop comic collection too.
Betty Boop by Robert Langridge went on sale May 16, 2017.
I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.