Writer: Ani-Mia
Artist: Celor
Colorist: Farah Nurmaliza
Letterer: Carlos M. Mangual
Cover Artist: Joseph Michael Linsner
Publisher: Dynamite
Price: $19.99
Release Date: August 30, 2023
After a five-hour photo shoot, Bettie relaxes by the pool. But when she receives a message from Colonel Westbrook, she trades her mojito for a helicopter ride. Does he need her assistance with Bigfoot again, or does a greater danger threaten the world? Let’s beam into the Bettie Page: The Alien Agenda TP and find out!
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Story
The Colonel tells her about a spaceship crash in Roswell, New Mexico. Government experts have studied the records inside the craft for a decade. They believe the aliens have spied on Earth for centuries and hidden a cache somewhere on Earth. The government worries it might contain weapons and wants to destroy it. Will Bettie help him protect the United States—and perhaps the entire world—against this alien threat?
Colonel Westbrook can’t back her officially this time. Nor can Bettie visit the base where the spaceship is stored. He can provide an expense account and transport wherever the clues take her. The rest will be up to her and two other civilians he knows. Aiding Bettie will be an archeologist named Sofia and Young-Ja, a codebreaker barely out of her teens. The two women share a fascination for languages. As for Bettie, she’s even-tempered, trustworthy, and looks good in a bathing suit. Why shouldn’t the Colonel request her aid?
Ani-Mia doesn’t mention Bettie’s agent, Benjamin Du’Met, in Bettie Page: The Alien Agenda TP. Nor does she feature Bettie’s secretary Karen Beauregard from Mirka Andolfo & Luca Blengino’s current series. Aside from referring to their previous adventure, Colonel Westbrook doesn’t mention Bettie’s unique qualifications for combatting this threat to national security. Still, the ladies’ adventure will take them to ancient sites across the globe. Bettie, Sofia, and Young-Ja will learn about each other as they decipher hieroglyphics, solve puzzles, fight mythological terrors, discover extinct plants and animals, and encounter an ancient community hidden from the modern world. They’ll brave danger every step of the way, yet Ani-Mia’s light tone keeps the story fun.
Art
Celor packs pages with panels that generate interest and excitement. Bettie, Sofia, and Young-Ya look realistic, are expressive, and move well. They look good pouring over files, trekking through the jungle, exploring underground passages, and facing tests that require bravery and faith. Perhaps backgrounds in the final issue suffer, but that’s a paltry quibble, given how much attention to detail the artist lavished upon this five-issue series.
Farah Nurmaliza loads her palette with bright colors that provide warmth, energy, mood, and contrast. She shades and highlights without overusing gray in the Bettie Page: The Alien Agenda TP. Buildings glow with light as darkness falls, laser beams burn through the air, electricity surges and sizzles, and stars in a sea of midnight blue shine down upon the ruins of a once-great civilization.
Carlos M. Mangual uses colored time/space markers and places black, uppercase letters in white dialogue balloons. Intonation may enlarge or shrink words, but the font is easy on the eyes in the Bettie Page: The Alien Agenda TP. He enhances Ani-Mia’s dialogue-driven narrative with colorful, energetic sound effects that help us hear cows startled by a flying saucer crash, arrows swish above snake-filled pits, sacrificial daggers slam into ancient stone walls, and fumes hiss from relics. In addition to the five action-packed issues, the trade paperback boasts a thirty-page cover gallery, including cosplay covers featuring writer Ani-Mia!
Final Thoughts
In the male-dominated Cold War 1950s, Bettie, Sofia, and Young-Ja brave temptations and dangers. The women wrestle with mysteries left by ancient civilizations as they hunt for a hidden alien stockpile in the Bettie Page: The Alien Agenda TP. But can they trust the authorities that charged them with this secret mission?