Cool and Strange People: Bettie Page & Dave Stevens

It was 1981 when (now defunct) independent comic book publisher Pacific Comics asked artist Dave Stevens to do some short stories for them. Stevens had been given complete freedom about that and so he decided to put together a few things he had had in his mind for a while: old cars, planes, a man using a rocket to fly and Bettie Page. By collating the various elements together, he created Rocketeer, which in 1991 was adapted as a Disney-produced movie.

When working on his little project, he didn't realize that - other than creating a cult comic book character - he had just given a huge contribution to the relaunch of Page's name and likeness and the creation of a cult around an almost forgotten 1950s model who ended up being considered a sex symbol and a pop culture icon second maybe only to Marilyn Monroe.

In the same way, Bettie Page - who died December 11th, 2008 - wasn't certainly aware that her sexy poses for people like Irving and Paula Klaw or Bunny Yeager would have been later considered iconic and a sort of trigger for the upcoming sexual revolution. "The fact they're claiming I'm an innovator and started the sexual revolution" - said Page once in an interview - "I don't know where they get that. I never did anything sexual in my posing." That interview was done with Dave Stevens and appeared on an audio cd containing 60 minutes of Bettie's voice and released by German label Normal Records in 2001. In it, Page recalled many memories of her personal life and career.

Her modeling days over by 1958, she didn't even know that some magazines through the 1960s and 1970s still carried small ads about the sale of Bettie Page photos. Page lived anonymously for decades and without any of the money she could have done by exploiting her old work; this was later compensated thanks to a partnership with CMG Worldwide (the same celebrity agency that handled Marilyn Monroe's image, until earlier this year two separate court decisions showed that Monroe is in the public doman as for "personality rights").

Mark Roesler, business agent for Bettie Page published the following statement on her official website Bettiepage.com:

"With deep personal sadness I must announce that my dear friend and client Bettie Page passed away at 6:41pm PST this evening in a Los Angeles hospital. She died peacefully but had never regained consciousness after suffering a heart attack nine days ago.

She captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality. She is the embodiment of beauty."

When starting to draw Bettie in Rocketeer, Stevens was 26. He could have never imagined dying at 55 and being survived by his muse even by a few months. Seems strange - but in a way appropriate - that they both left us this year.