Plot and Guidelines.
This page is for Betty Bimbo & The Gumball Phantom pages.

Have you ever thought about trying to write a romance novel? What about a true romance, or your own true love short story set in some exotic location?
HERE'S YOUR CHANCE.

Here are a few pages from one of my Father's books. It's a telephone conversation between a publisher and his reporter who is on location trying to find a long lost manuscript written by an award winning author in his early years.
It serves as a general plot guide for the never-ending fantasy quest.
"'The Adventures of Betty Bimbo' was originally a series of sci-fi storybooks with small two or three page comic pages inserted here and there. They were done by the Joel in the early '70s. I have all of the old photography plates for them stored at home. It was during the period that Joel calls his 'hippy years.' He was working for the newspaper, doing the column while going to school and did the comics on the side. The books were only published once a month in black and white printing for the entire four years. During the last year, a few were done in full color like other mainline comic books. In some circles, an original of any of these comics is worth a bundle. The first issue goes for over a thousand bucks today. The thing that makes these books so unusual is that, unlike regular comics, these were done as a full set of adventure books right from the beginning. Each issue had a couple of pages of text then cartoon-type artwork, then back to text again over and over. In other words, each issue was almost a full size book or adventure, highlighted with a few pieces of artwork for readers to identify with the sexpot, Betty Bimbo. Betty Bimbo was the ultimate time traveler. She had no super powers, no invisible plane or trick lariat or anything that could compare her with other female comic book characters during those times --- even Vampirella (if you overlook her having a 'killer' good-looking figure.) She was the opposite of Edgar Rice Burrough's "John Carter of Mars" Sci-Fi books. Betty would arrive at a certain fixed location in a cave at the top of a mountain located on land belonging to the gumball phantom each month. in her seemingly endless mission of searching for her colonists. Her planet's long-ago ancestors had attempted to colonize earth, using a starship loaded with re produceable vacuum-packed androids, like so many cans of coffee. These canisters would activate themselves when exposed to certain types of gas and moisture on earth. However, they made a mistake in judging the evolution to our planet and, instead of making a habitable earth safe for the others to come, the starship had arrived in our prehistoric, pre-caveman period. After crashing, some of the chemicals mixed together when the cannisters cracked open. Some were super humaniods while other Monsters were created with the bodies of humans and the heads and body-parts of the animals. These android monsters had gone amuck. The trouble with androids is that they couldn't just die. If they were trapped in a cave, volcano, underwater or some other dark place, they would temporarily shut down, but they would not die. They were, in effect, immortal. These vacuum-packed androids had to be turned off and returned, in time, to her home planet or be destroyed completely. That became Betty's mission every month. She could look up an account of one of them in the stories from mythology to get clues about where they might be trapped back in history. It wasn't always Greek, Roman and Egyptian myths she pursed, some were as modern as Paul Bunyon, Babe the blue ox and Pecos Bill. Like a James Bond in drag, Betty would scurry around the planet, looking for these creatures and shut them down. She was more often than not aided by the Gumball Phantom, who was as much a mystery as Betty herself. He was blessed with unlimited funds to purchase high-tech gadgets to do the job from his world-wide network of stands of gumball machines in thousands of locations, and was unwavering in his love and devotion to the over-sexed, dark-haired Goddess of Time Travel." "That sounds great, John. Why don't you try to get them reprinted and talk Joel into releasing the new ones I've found ?" "Good idea. If I remember right, the first series was such a big hit because Betty looked a lot like the cult heroine, Bettie Page and everyone wanted them. This was at a time when the original, nude, super-star pin-up, Bettie Page, had disappeared from public life by finding enlightenment in religion and going back to the hills to settle down in her log cabin. Because of the way she vanished without a trace or any ties to her past, she became an underground cult figure. Very few --- I would say a mere handful --- really knew where she went. Many people --- myself included --- tried to keep the mystery of Bettie Page going for our readers. It was sound economics in those days. A lot of people were doing cartoons and illustrations in the likeness of Bettie Page. Because of his skill in rendering the Betty Bimbo comics, Joel was considered 'The Top Gun' in comic books for awhile. Since it's not likely you'll find many of the original comics because of short print-runs of only a few hundred copies for subscribers, I'll probably have to re-create Betty Bimbo for a new generation by the using the old printing plates in the basement. Even the short introductory book introducing Betty and explaining how the computer in the cavern with the time travel equipment thought that 'Bimbo' was a well-respected family name on earth, was short-printed. The explanation about the name was that computers can make mistakes in interpreting data. After monitoring the air waves from earth and hearing so many references along the lines of someone being 'a Bimbo' or "He came to the party with a Bimbo," and "He's just a male Bimbo," and so forth, the computer gave her the name. Even after discovering the true meaning of 'Bimbo,' Betty decided she liked the name. Betty Bimbo was the precursor of the Modern, Sexually-Liberated Woman. This introduction, by being the first book as well as being short-printed, is almost impossible to find. Among cvollectors, it's considered to be nearly priceless. If we wanted to, some of the original drawings could be updated to fit the times and get away from the Bettie Page look, but the stories would have to be the same identical manuscripts. Actually, from the recent resurgence of interest in Bettie Page as a result of articles in Playboy Magazine, leaving the artwork exactly as it was in the original might not be a bad idea. There were only a total of fifty-three monthly books issued, but you say that you've found thirteen more that no one has ever seen ? That's enough to get a real strong following going again. Let's go with working on Joel to let us do them again. If course, that comes after he approves the publishing of the lost manuscript you found. We don't want to jeopardize that. After that, you can hit him with an offer for the comics." "Okay, John. Boy, it seems like every day we've got something new to work on since we got him involved with us. First it was The Wizard column. Then sculptures followed by paintings, a manuscript and now comic books. Are you sure he's not three people, or some kind of a superman himself ?" "I'm reasonably sure. In some ways, dealing with Joel is almost like dealing with Gene Roddenberry's ageless android, 'Questor,' but I'm reasonably certain that Joel is not a multi-talented android of some kind ... I think.

There you have it. That's the main plot you must work within. You can use any cultures' mythology, like the flying serpent of Mexico, ETC. You will always have the two main characters, Betty & the Gumball Phantom. You can use secondary people to help your writing along.

REMEMBER THIS, YOU CANNOT USE ANY COPYRIGHTED PROSE OR ARTWORK HERE BECAUSE THIS BOOK BELONGS TO EVERYONE. It can be used and copied and given away as you wish, no matter where you are on this planet. We strongly believe in a one world community here of real people, not a world of many governments and monarchies that can't get along with each other. ONLY THE ORIGINAL COMIC BOOKS AND COLLECTIONS OF STORIES WERE COPYRIGHTED. Everything else will belong to all of you. THE BEST CHAPTER OF WRITING EACH MONTH, (if any) WILL BE POSTED HERE FOR DOWNLOADING, AND GIVEN WRITERS CREDITS, ALONG WITH A COLLECTION OF BOOKS . YOU WILL ALSO RECEIVE A TROPHY OR CERTIFICATE. (ONLY IF YOU"RE IN A COUNTRY THAT ALLOWS SHIPPING FROM THE U.S.A.) (Otherwise you will have to download the Electronic versions for your collection of books from E-mail messages or attachments one at a time)
IF ANY OF YOU ARTIST TYPES WANT TO CONTRIBUTE TO THIS PAGE YOU SHOULD HAVE BETTY LOOK SIMILAR IN FEATURES TO THE PHOTOGRAPH OF THE REAL BETTIE PAGE BELOW. IT'S ONE OF THE FEW WE COULD FIND WITH HER BEING DRESSED. There will be a page of your drawings and/or animations at a later date. This of course is only a sample to guide you. She should have the look of the 70s, a head band with studs, short skirt and halter or a toga type short dress, boots, wide belt with silver studs or coins, dark hair with straight bangs, a very healthy body along the lines of "Vampirella" (Very Sexy) etc.
As the book gets bigger and better it will be compressed for downloading and stored at the geocities pages we have, with a link to it from the next page for all of you to have a copy. USE THE STOPSIGN BUTTON BELOW TO GO TO THE BOOK PAGE FOR A STARTER IDEA AND TO READ, WRITE OR CONTINUE WITH THE BOOK "BETTY BIMBO & THE GUMBALL PHANTOM OR USE THE NEXT BUTTON TO GO TO THE ROMANCE NOVEL INTRODUCTION PAGE. IF YOU GO TO THE BETTY PAGE."

• Betty Bimbo & The Gumball Phantom Page

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Revised: date August-1-1997
Copyright 1997
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