Leslie Cabarga, Cartoonist, Illustrator, Designer and Author

From the "About" section of www.lesliecabarga.com.

In 1970, Leslie Cabarga, a 15 year old cartoonist living in (ugh! gasp!) New Jersey, who had been inspired by the black and white Betty Boop cartoons shown on TV that he’d loved as a youth, set out on a quest to find the answer to a question which by that time was on everybody’s lips. And that question was: Who was Betty Boop?

His search led him from New Jersey to New York, to Brooklyn, to San Francisco, to Hollywood California, and also to Hollywood, Florida. The result of his four-year search for answers was the publication of “The Fleischer Story” in 1976. That original hard cover book may now be found in used book stores (and on the internet) for as much as $300. (Order an autographed copy of the soft-cover 2nd edition direct from the author in the Books section of his website http://www.lesliecabarga.com/collections/books/products/the-fleischer-story-max-fleischer-in-the-golden-age-of-animation —only a few copies left!).

In addition to simply writing and designing The Fleischer Story which resurrected the memory of Max Fleischer and his talented brothers, Dave, Lou, Joe and Charles, Leslie Cabarga resurrected Betty herself. In the 1970s he designed the first lines of Boop ceramics for Vandor Imports. In the 1980s he did Boop stickers and products for Lisa Frank and began a series of Boop greeting cards for Paper Moon and Pop Shots. There were eventually 44 Paper Moon cards and 4 for Pop Shots. These were the first Boop products to hit the modern market since the 1930s and they re-established Betty as the queen of the cartoon screen.