In Review: Bettie Page: Unbound #10

Synopsis: The Duplanoids stand ready to take over the planet, and only one lone pinup-model-turned-spy can stop them! The Invasion of the Bettie Snatchers reaches its senses-shattering climax.

Review: David Avallone closes ‘Invasion of the Bettie Snatchers’ out in true B-movie style.

The Story

Determined to free McKnight and her friends from the Queen Bee Bettie and Lyssa infiltrate the Praesepod base and pose as Airforce Officers to get to the honeycomb section undetected. While there they begin the process of trying to free their friends and take back control of the airforce base, which also happens to be the headquarters of project blue book.

The Artwork

Julius Ohta provides some great panels of artwork for this issue. I especially loved how he handled Bettie and Lyssa’s dive underwater in order to break into the base and the way he played with light and shadow as the two were navigating the long tunnel to get into the base. Most dramatic of all is how he drew the confrontation toward the end of the book between Bettie and the Queen Bee. It is drawn in what I can only describe as a true 1950s style layout. With the giant Queen Bee center stage and a very small Bettie stood in front giving as much sass as she is getting from the Queen.

Overall

As a science fiction fan that grew up in the 70s and 80s and watched many of the old 50s B-Movies on BBC 2 during my early teens. I’ve really enjoyed this particular story arc. The whole idea of aliens posing as humans is an old trope as far as science fiction storytelling goes. But it is rarely done as well as Avallone manages to do it in this book. The story put me in mind of numerous movies from the 50s era where America was obsessed with finding reds under the bed and were extremely paranoid about communism infiltrating the country.

Overall. This gets a huge thumbs up from me. Now if only someone can convince Dynamite to pick up the licensing agreement to do a comic book adaptation of the old 1960s series ‘The Invaders‘. Now that would really be something.