4 out of 5

Well, this one’s not for kids.  Unless you like yer kids drinkin’ and swearin’ and suicidin’.  (YES, YES I DO.)  Dillies’ work is much looser here than it was in ‘Abelard’ – sketchier, more pattern-based, often relying on a circular motif in his (?) panels, with touches of surrealism that really deliver the right tone for when our characters are in a less lucid state…  This limberness is to the service of the story, embellishing a woozy love affair with jazz music for Rice Duck and how it floats around his bumpy relationship with a lass named Betty.  Betty is pitched to us as something of a drunk – though this is a bit short-sighted since we don’t get much on her character – and is easily swept away from Rice during a show one night by the rich and magnanimous James Patton.  Post horn-bleatin’, Rice takes the absence of his girlfriend in the worst way and goes on his own binge before deciding to give up the whole shebang and leave town.  End of the line, and he finds a job at a forest-destroyin’ factory with new owl buddy Bowen.  But the music itch is still there…

The narrative itself is slippery – consistent in pacing but like a Richard Linklater observational comic in terms of focus  – and thus Dillies’ free-er hand and sketchy linework (solid blacks are rare) assists in getting your reading eye into the groove.  It’s hard to say if the mixed bag of story elements – Bowen’s roping Rice into a ‘save the forest’ plot, Betty’s confused willingness to go along with Patton’s sudden attachment and gifts, a couple’s run-in with a discarded instrument – are purposefully stunted to highlight the uncaring nature of fate or are just a consequence of foreign story-telling styles.  Either way, ‘Betty Blues’ is a pretty trippily sad wanderer’s tale… very narrow in scope, perhaps, at 80 pages, but running through an effective gamut of emotions within those pages, touching just the right beat with Rice’s approach to things – not too whiny, not too preachy, not too stupid, not too smart – to make him realistic and relatable.  The shuffling subplots and, once the book hits halfway, the alternating Betty / Rice pages keep the pacing fresh, even though we really only get to a handful of small locations, like a stage play.

It would’ve been interesting had Dillies expanded on Betty a bit, but the focus is meant to be on Rice and by keeping her as passive participant rather than a mover and shaker, ‘Betty Blues’ allows us to take responsibility via Rice for our actions; you can blame Betty if you want, but all she did was exist.  As was the case with ‘Abelard,’ there are mature themes hidden behind some deceptively cartoonish figures.  Unlike ‘Abelard,’ though, ‘Betty’ is certainly not meant to be all-ages, allowing Dillies to leave direct moral lessons out of the tale and, on the flip-side, get a little goofy.  It doesn’t have to mean anything, but – again, likening it to Linklater – that same open-endedness is what makes it a unique and worthwhile visual and reading experience.