Ink vs CGI

“Old School” Abel Wilberforce had been approaching his 75th birthday. Though not in serious ill-health, he had begun to think of his and the legacy he would leave. He had had five marriages, but he was proven sterile; even his two surviving exes wanted nothing to do with his “sealing wax and paper” money. He was worth closer to a billion dollars than not. But, except for maybe a few million on hand, all of that was tied up in inventory. He was one of the greatest collectibles dealers in the world. If you could name something from the popular culture of, say, before fifty years ago, he probably had it. In certain categories, they could be newer. Especially comic books. But nothing after “Who Watches the Watchmen?” He had a particularly acidic hate of the "father of all abominations".

Clark Parker had a hope of getting a piece of the booty. He was one of many who had been hired to update the inventory, and run a damage-control assessment. How many items and of what type of item, etc. would the collectibles market be able to absorb without its whole economy being brought down by saturation? One of the reasons he had been hired was that he agreed to take a stipend in return for the pay-in-kind of the type of items that he was interested and specialized in as a collector himself. That was films, “cells” in particular, the fragile, flammable film cartoons had been painted on so they could be photographed (a cell to frame at a time).

It started, appropriately, with a cell of a Fleischer Betty Boop short, and from the infamous hula scene at that of “Bamboo Isle”. As the studio had done quite often, they had traced over a live action shot. Looking back, the ACME ink must have had more animating power because it had absorbed some of the human vitality was just beneath it. Thinking of his need to for a girlfriend, Clark Parker had lingered longer than he needed to assess the condition of the cell; his special backlighting lamp remained on for a little longer than it should have; and he did the collector’s cardinal sin of removing his damage-reducing gloves to touch the “made from pen and ink” Betty. Did he do it before or after he noticed her moving? It hadn't been much at first. It definitely was much after! She had giggled, frown, slapped his fingers and accused him of being “Fresh!”. Man! He must have been horny! She felt so real!

Traces of her movement remained, but they remained after that slow and lethargic. This inspired Parker to see if he could find any more actually moving animations. He started with the nearest Betty Boop cells around him. Some showed none, some less; none showed more. Until -

The short was, again, appropriately, called “More Pep”. As he remembered it, it was released in 1936, at the decline of her popularity because censorship had reduced her sexiness to stodgy depression fashions. He also remember it as having given her the chance to take away the spotlight away from her pet dog, Pudgy, and for Max Fleischer to return to some of the studio’s glory days, where anything and anything could come to life, jump in and out of the human world, and even humans could be affected by what happened in the cartoon. Betty even did some of the ink drawings from the human side of the canvas. The true star, though, had been the vitamin-making machine. Its scale went from Vim - Vigor - Vitality - Pep - and then went Too Far beyond!

The cell (with so many other almost moving cells around it) was of the Super-pep showering machine following the pup into the inkwell at the end. He was disappointed Betty wasn’t in it.

Suddenly Betty was in it! There was a splash of ink as the machine dove in. Betty laughed and swatted handfuls of the splash at the viewer - or at Parker?!?! - Ink came OUT of the celluloid!! Reacting, he jumped to his feet and away from the stain-maker!