Betsy and Me Paperback – Illustrated, 6 Dec. 2007

Despite being an innovator in the Golden Age of Comic Books and the creator of an inarguable superhero masterpiece, Plastic Man, cartoonist Jack Cole's greatest ambition from the very beginning was to create a syndicated newspaper strip. He finally achieved his dream when the Chicago Sun-Times syndicate bought BETSY AND ME in 1958. Having employed different drawing styles, including big-foot and realistic, throughout his career, Cole changed again by stripping his style down to the bare essentials. He also departed somewhat from the usual newsprint narrative conventions by having the pictures belie the narration delivered by somewhat-delusional and self-denying protagonist Chet Tibbit, spouse of Betsy and father to genuine boy genius Farley. But, despite having reached his career goal, Cole inexpicably committed suicide only two and a half months into BETSY AND ME, and the strip was turned over to the inferior Dwight Parks until it, too, died a few months later. It's uncertain if even the incomparable Cole could have sustained his creation if he'd lived. BETSY AND ME is only a mildly interesting, if twisted, sitcom; the banal situations might have come off better if the humor were more inventive. Even the art is kind of boring. In the end, this small volume, which doesn't even contain the full run of the series, will only be indispensable to Jack Cole completists and those interested in the last work of an unqualified comic genius.

If this had truly been complete, I would have rated it five stars. While it isn't Cole's greatest work, most Cole fans will want to read it. The strip is not an awesome strip, but I enjoyed it. The big problem is that the book purports to be complete, but it is not. Most of it is there, of course.