Artists and Models

Friends from their small hometown of Steubendale, Rick Todd and Eugene Fullstack are now roommates in a Greenwich Village walk-up as they try, so far unsuccessfully, to make a living as an artist and a children's book author, respectively. That lack of success is because Eugene's obsession with violent comic books, primarily Bat Lady, always creates a problem of one sort or another, leaving Rick almost at the end of his rope in his friendship with Eugene. Eugene's obsession is so embedded that most nights he has nightmares due to the violence in the comic books, he talking in his sleep in his narration of those nightmares. Their fortunes have the potential to change when Abby Parker and Bessie Sparrowbush move into the building, Abby, also an artist, the illustrator of the Bat Lady comics, and Bessie, who models as Bat Lady for Abby, the secretary to Abby's publisher, Mr. Murdock. While wanting to capitalize off of Abby's connections, Rick is nonetheless attracted to her romantically. And while Bessie is attracted to Eugene, she wants him to like her for her, he, in his fascination with the unknown woman in the Bat Lady outfit, not knowing that she and Bat Lady are one and the same. These two burgeoning romances are further threatened when Rick is able to get a job with Murdock developing a new comic book. What Rick does not tell anyone is that his concept is purely from Eugene's nightmare ramblings. The problem is is that Eugene's ramblings include the actual formula for a top secret American rocket fuel, or at least half the formula, it being in print form which comes to the attention not only of the American government but the enemy who wants to get their hands on the entire formula.