Review - Betsy and Me by Jack Cole
Cartoonist Jack Cole is best known in comics for his work on “Plastic Man,” while out in the real world, he defined what we think of when we envision a Playboy cartoon. Cole’s work was fluid and energetic, filled with visual wit. In the collection “Betsy and Me,” Fantagraphics gathers his final major work, a weekly comic strip that was by all accounts the pinnacle of his career — how odd it was that he should commit suicide after completely only two and a half months worth of the strip.
While this bit of background is not mandatory to the enjoyment of the strip, it does give it a dark edge that wouldn’t be apparent otherwise — on the surface, the whole thing seems so innocent, so sprightly suburban, so 1950s. No one characterized it better than Art Speigelman, that with the knowledge of Cole’s untimely end, the strip “reads like a suicide note delivered in daily installments.”
Indeed, it does at times, but this isn’t necessarily unusual — comedians are humorists often the darkest of creatures and there was certainly something haunting Jack Cole.
But what of “Betsy and Me” without the grim epilogue?
Cole’s strip involves a fellow named Chet Tibbet as he rattles off small talk about his daily life to the cartoon-reading audience. During the course of the strip, Tibbet covers his engagement and marriage and the subsequent birth of his son, a child genius. While rendered in the traditional three panels — and certainly delivering some level of punchline at the end of each strip — Cole lays the topics and themes across days and days of entries. The arcs might have to do with purchasing a car or dealing with their friends or moving to the suburbs, and by doing this Cole creates very interesting hybrid — part Blondie, part Mary Worth.
Coles jokes are calm, his art airy. For all the compilations of “Plastic Man,” here he has stripped down his work to fewer lines, though extremely well-chosen. One curve speaks volumes here and as the strip continues, the art becomes more spare, yet more precise.
“Betsy and Me” comes off as a good-humored strip and reminiscent of some of the television comedy at the time, with its apparent gentle jabs at middle class living. The problem is that the jabs here aren’t that gentle at all — in fact, they’re downright subversive. Tibbet is presented as a man on a track that he can’t quite get off of once he eyes the right girl — and a victim of life, though a genial one. Not that his existence is horrible — it’s just not an exciting one and Tibbet is left to make it seem so by telling tall tales that, through the miracle of cartooning, he often comes off as the rube of his wife, his child, his boss, his neighbors.
Is Chet Tibbet another everyman — or is there a little bit of Jack Cole in there?
As R.C. Harvey’s thorough and fascinating forward flat-out states, there’s a lot of speculation, but far fewer answers. What is left is “Betsy and Me,” amusing and friendly, what seems like an example of someone laughing in the darkness — except Jack Cole stopped laughing and, therefore, so did Chet Tibbet.
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