{"id":817,"date":"2013-04-30T09:46:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-30T16:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/?p=817"},"modified":"2023-12-12T11:20:44","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T19:20:44","slug":"terry-moore-stranger-in-paradise-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/terry-moore-stranger-in-paradise-part-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Terry Moore: Stranger in Paradise, Part One"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\n
\n

THE TOUCAN INTERVIEW<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry Moore: Stranger in Paradise, Part One<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"Toucan<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
\"\"
Terry at WonderCon Anaheim 2013. Photo by Tina Gill, \u00a9 2013 SDCC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the age-old story: girl meets girl. Girl falls for girl. Girl is confused. Both girls meet guys. More confusion. A sinister cabal known to topple governments rears its ugly head. Suspense ensues. Tragedy results. Love conquers all. They live happily ever after. The end.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That, in a nutshell, is Terry Moore\u2019s <\/em>Strangers in Paradise, one of the most highly regarded self-published series of the past two decades. Terry started <\/em>SiP in 1993, and the world of Francine, Katchoo, David, Casey, Tambi, Darcy, and\u2014lest we forget\u2014Freddy Femur, has delighted comics readers for years. The series ended in 2007 but lives on in collected versions. Terry moved on to create <\/em>Echo and his current series, <\/em>Rachel Rising. But it\u2019s hard to say goodbye to the family, and Terry and his wife Robyn, who together make up Abstract Studio, are celebrating the 20th anniversary of <\/em>SiP in a big way, as you\u2019ll see during part one of our exclusive interview, which keys on <\/em>Strangers in Paradise. Terry is a special guest at Comic-Con this year.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> What\u2019s a typical day like for you? I ask this because, like clockwork for the last\u2014I don\u2019t know\u2014how many years, you\u2019ve been putting a book out pretty much every six weeks.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry:<\/strong> Yeah. The way I do it is I just don\u2019t do anything else. I wake up and shower, eat breakfast, sit down at the drawing table and start drawing and then I break for the next two meals and then I draw until about 1:00 or 2:00 at night and that\u2019s all I do until it\u2019s time to go to a convention. So I live like a monk. The only room I really use in the house is the studio room. Even if I go to the kitchen to eat lunch, I won\u2019t sit down because I\u2019m so tired of sitting down. I\u2019ll just stand up in the kitchen and then I\u2019m in and out in 10 minutes and I\u2019m back up there. So it\u2019s not so much a job as it is just a lifestyle. And over the years Robyn has developed the same lifestyle with me. It\u2019s just how we conduct the house and we\u2019re just all about trying to make the business work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Do you have days when you concentrate on writing, or is it always drawing?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry:<\/strong> I try to write when I\u2019m trying to jumpstart a book and I end up drawing a blank. So if I need a kickstart, I sit down with pen and paper or computer and I\u2019ll write. But usually I just cartoon, meaning I have a scene in my head and then I\u2019ll sit down to blank paper and make it happen, cartooning being writing as you draw. I will develop the scene as I\u2019m drawing it. It\u2019s a way of freeze-framing film, and you\u2019re starting at it wondering what they\u2019re going to say next and you have all day to figure out five or six panels of dialogue. So it works really well for me. That\u2019s basically what I\u2019ve been doing since I was 13: blank paper and just cartooning scenes. So this is what\u2019s comfortable for me, I guess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> With something like <\/em>Rachel Rising, you know pretty much where you\u2019re going to go when it comes to a long-term plan, right?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry:<\/strong> Yes, I do. I have the big beats figured out. I know where I\u2019m trying to get to like a road trip. And typically what\u2019ll happen is there\u2019s a scene pause and it stays on the characters for a little bit. That\u2019s where I\u2019m cartooning because then the characters start getting into a rhythm; like if it\u2019s two girls and they\u2019re ping-ponging cleverness back and forth, that\u2019s cartooning. That\u2019s me just thinking while I\u2019m drawing. But in terms of major scenes in the book and each scene accomplishing this or that, that\u2019s the kind of stuff I have to figure out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> You\u2019ve used the word cartooning a number of times. Do you look at yourself as more of a cartoonist or as a storyteller?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry:<\/strong> You know storyteller has only come up . . . people have only accused me of that in the last year. Before that nobody knew what to say to me, so I always just said \u201ccartoonist,\u201d because what I\u2019m doing is cartooning to me. In the grand sense when you go back and analyze this volume of work, it\u2019s storytelling, but I\u2019m really just a bricklayer. I\u2019m doing it a page at a time and all that. So the mechanics of it, the day-to-day life for me is that I\u2019m just trying to cartoon a page every day. The big picture, when you pull back and look to tell the story, that\u2019s pretty cool, but I don\u2019t identify much as a storyteller. I guess I identify myself as an eccentric person who\u2019s spending a lot of time in a fantasy world, like a gamer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Terry in the early days of\u00a0Strangers in Paradise.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> When you look back at all the jobs you\u2019ve had, you were a musician for a while and then you went into video editing and then finally comics. As a musician you tell stories with lyrics, as a video editor you tell stories with images. Was all of this consciously or subconsciously training you to do comics?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry:<\/strong> Yeah, definitely because in the other two mediums it\u2019s all about taking a lot of raw data and truncating it down to a tight message, whether you\u2019re talking about lyrics or a 3-minute song or a solo, or in editing it\u2019s all about taking hours and hours of footage and making the best 30 seconds out of it. So yeah it did. It was all the same thing for me. I think that the music helped me the most with words, with wordcraft, because I\u2019ve written hundreds of songs and that\u2019s all about trying to say as much as you can in very few words. Every word needs to be packed, and that really helped me in cartooning, because you have your limited space above their heads and the limited size of the bubble, and if I want to say something, I can\u2019t afford to ramble on like a novelist. They have to speak right, distinctive, and succinct. It has to look like it\u2019s casual, but actually every word is culled out and selected and packed with some sort of other meaning. And every double entendre I can pack in there I do, everything. I put in every Easter egg and subliminal everything I can, whether it\u2019s in the words or it\u2019s felt. That all comes from those other two disciplines. It\u2019s the same thing you\u2019re doing in there. I see it all as the same: creating is creating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> How did you get into comics? Were you a comics fan as a kid?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry:<\/strong> Yeah. It was one thing that I always did in my room and with friends. I was lucky enough to always have a couple of friends that could draw as well, and we typically bought comic books and read them together and copied them. Things kind of really took off when I was about 13 and we discovered the more flippant relevant comics like MAD<\/em> magazine, Creepy,<\/em> National Lampoon,<\/em> stuff like that, that made us laugh as teenage boys. And then that actually encouraged me to cartoon, as I went through my teenage stages. You know how you go through all those stages? Cartooning was a good thing for each stage because of whatever angst or anger you were going through that year, there was a cartooning outlet for it. The more angry and sullen I got as a teenager, the more I got into Robert Crumb and dark comics and all that. There was always some sort of cartooning outlet available to help me vent and live and find an identification. As you keep doing that over a few years, by the time you get into high school all the people know oh, there\u2019s more. He\u2019s lousy at football, but he can draw. So it was that kind of thing; I had that identification even as a teenager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> I think most people today don\u2019t know what a great package <\/em>National Lampoon was at that time. You had all these personal strips in the back by people like Bobby London and Shary Flenniken and B .K. Taylor and it was totally different than anything else you could get, even different than <\/em>MAD magazine. I can see how you can look at something like that and it would seem to be a beacon for doing really personal work.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry:<\/strong> It was. It brought out the desire in me to do work that was not just jokes but more personal, even if it was humor based like [Flenniken\u2019s] Trots & Bonnie<\/em>. I mean those cartoonists had a huge influence on me because I could identify. I realized that each of them had accomplished something that really appealed to me. I didn\u2019t have the language for it at the time, but I look back at it and what was appealing to me was that they developed avatars for real life. [And when it] sucked, they could go and draw Dirty Duck<\/em> and have it do all the stuff you can\u2019t do in real life. And as a frustrated young man that\u2019s as good as it gets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I think cartooning and music were great places where a lot of angry young men went and turned their lives around. If it hadn\u2019t been for music, a lot of my musical heroes would have ended up in jail. So I think it really helped. I love the era that I grew up in. We had our own music, we had our own cartoonists, we had our own magazines. It was really cool. Still today, I\u2019m 300 years old and I\u2019m still living the same way I did then. I still wear the same clothes and the same cheap tennis shoes and everything. You know it\u2019s just really cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The trio at the heart of\u00a0Strangers in Paradise:<\/em>\u00a0David, Francine, and Katchoo. \u00a9 Terry Moore<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Yeah, but the question is, are you still angry?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry:<\/strong> No; if you\u2019re my age and still angry that\u2019s a sad situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> At some point you were a musician and then you became a video editor and you got basically to the point where you were done being a video editor and you decided to do comics. Originally you wanted to do a comic strip.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Why did that appeal to you more than comic books?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry:<\/strong> Because I thought of comic books as beautifully drawn illustration works and those big long stories and I had always worked in one or two pages or in strips. Everything I\u2019d done was either ripping off Peanuts<\/em> or ripping off one-page National Lampoon<\/em> stuff. When I look at comic books, it was Neal Adams and Jim Lee and Will Eisner and I thought, I can\u2019t draw like that. That\u2019s like looking at American illustration art and it\u2019s hard to imagine doing what James Montgomery Flagg did or Howard Chandler Christy did. I didn\u2019t relate. I didn\u2019t connect. So I thought it was for other people, but I felt like I had a sense of humor and I knew that if I got the right set of characters it would work and I could roll, but the problem was finding the characters. So I spent five years as an adult trying to develop a comic strip that I could make a business out of, but my head was on wrong. Everything I did was derivative, and the more I talked to editors and syndicates and asked the ideas of other people, the more messed up in my head I got in terms of not being able to come up with an original thought. You get so lost in the comic strip business and everybody\u2019s got a dog or a boy or parents, and next thing you know they\u2019re all saying you need to come up with something like that. It really messes your head up. And then the two guys that I love the most, Bill Watterson [Calvin & Hobbes<\/em>] and Berkley Breathed [Bloom County<\/em>], I was shocked to find that both of those guys had zero respect for comic strips and zero respect for other cartoonists and all that. And I realized that I had problems. My problem was that I loved them all too much. I loved Bill Watterson\u2019s work. I loved his brushwork. I wanted to know what paper he used and I loved Berkley Breathed and I wanted to see pictures of him traveling to the Antarctic and he bought a speedboat . . . really. Maybe if I get a speedboat I can come up with Bloom County.<\/em> So you get all fanboy-ish. I was too much of a fanboy to do anything original, and eventually I realized that that was a serious problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> You had a point where you rediscovered comic books, right?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry:<\/strong> It was at that point. When I hit the wall and I realized I\u2019m not going to get over this and I looked at comic books and saw the self-publishing movement. They were basically taking strip work and doing 20 pages of it. And I think the first thing I saw was Cerebus.<\/em> And in Cerebus,<\/em> instead of having 25 scenes like a Batman comic there was just two scenes in the entire 20 pages. And he took his time and me being an editor I looked at that and I thought well, hell I can do that. I can put a girl in a room with a cigarette and figure out something for her to do for 20 pages. I mean I could make a comic book now in the self-publishing movement. So I went back home and I went through all my strips and I threw all the derivative influence in one stack and then I threw any strip that had an original thought or a character in another stack and the original stack was very small and almost every page had a Francine or Katchoo or a David type character on it. So I thought of starting with those three and one day I just drew this scene where they\u2019re all in a living room together and as I was drawing I was thinking about their lives and who they were and how they talked to each other. And the magic epiphany thing happened as I was drawing it and by the time I finished, I no longer saw characters, I saw people. The minute I saw them as people the whole world opened up, my life changed. I stopped being a fanboy cartoonist and started thinking for myself and started writing about these people and fleshing out their lives and living with them, like you hear writers say. And when I did that it all just opened up for me. I mean it\u2019s amazing. It was like a floodgate, and man that was it, I was off and running. It was a major deal. The turning point for me was when I stopped thinking of characters and started thinking about people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
\u00a9 Terry Moore<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Toucan<\/strong><\/em>: Strangers in Paradise is almost impossible to categorize. It\u2019s a comedy, it\u2019s a romance, it\u2019s a thriller; it\u2019s funny, it\u2019s tragic, it\u2019s heart warming, it\u2019s shocking. If you had to pitch it to Hollywood or another publisher in one short pitch, what would you say?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry:<\/strong> I\u2019ve never had a good answer for it and that\u2019s why it\u2019s never worked out in Hollywood because nobody\u2019s been able to come up with that answer. I\u2019ve seen some readers Tweet something and I\u2019ll think, ooh, that\u2019s a great sentence about it. And it\u2019s usually something along the lines of, oh god I can\u2019t even remember but it\u2019s usually, they mention love, that it\u2019s a love story. But if you say love story, guys start thinking about pink things and chick movies and Meryl Streep. So that\u2019s a dangerous word to say. The reason Strangers in Paradise<\/em> is not optioned is because nobody can explain it in 2 minutes in a business meeting. So it\u2019s a real problem. But it\u2019s like The Sopranos. <\/em>What is the plot to The Sopranos<\/em>? What\u2019s the plot to The X-Files<\/em>? Well, there isn\u2019t a single plot. There\u2019s just kind of like a foundation and a way to live with characters for a long time, like Castle.<\/em> There\u2019s a different plot every time. And I kind of did that too. I\u2019d go through and the next 12 issues will be about they go to Vegas. The next 12 will be they\u2019re in high school and that\u2019s kind of how I did it. I thought I was going to do Strangers in Paradise<\/em> for the rest of my life like Blondie<\/em> and I would have, if the sales kept up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> When you came up with these characters, did you know the back story of someone like Katcho,o which is complicated and dangerous and not at all what it appears to be at first glance. Did you know all that was coming or did it just kind of evolve?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry:<\/strong> No, it was fuzzy in the miniseries. What I based Katchoo on was girls I\u2019d always grown up with in high school and in the band. In high school there was always the girl who was oddly cute, not gorgeous, but she was cute. She wore jeans and the same clothes the guys did and smoked with us in the smoking area. She was comfortable around guys. And then in my band days, I knew this bartender named Cookie in Dallas and she looked like she could bench press her weight but she was cute and she hung out with the guys and she was just kind of a different type of girl. She wasn\u2019t the babysitter type. So I was thinking about those kind of girls for Katchoo\u2014that Katchoo was one of those blue jeans\/hiking boots girls\u2014but she had a tender heart and if you hooked her up with the babysitter girl it would be very interesting I thought. So that was kind of the dichotomy that appealed to me about that pairing. But I thought in terms of okay, sometimes those girls get into big trouble by hanging around with guys they shouldn\u2019t be around and I thought that was Katchoo. I thought she nearly lost her life a year or two ago and she\u2019s kind of hiding out from all that. And then as I started the series I thought I\u2019ve kind of insinuated all this stuff that Katchoo is a badass but I haven\u2019t actually shown her doing anything badass. So time to start paying up and that\u2019s when I started introducing things one at a time and as I developed it, it just started coming to me. I wasn\u2019t a chess player who had it all figured out in the beginning, because I worked on it for 14 years. I mean, you can\u2019t have 14 years figured out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> But that\u2019s the great thing about it: like you said they become people, but they also take on a life of their own.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry:<\/strong> Well, that happened and it was an amazing thing because for instance you asked about my working process. There were a number of times where I would write a script and then I would sit down to start drawing it and halfway through the opening page as I\u2019m drawing the girls talking to each other and saying that first or second line, the other girl comes up with a better quip. So I go with it. And then the other girl comes up with a better retort to that, but it implies something else and now it\u2019s changed every page. Now I have to change the story. So I had to throw my script out because I\u2019ve got a much better story going and the girls just kind of prompted it themselves, once I opened their mouths. There\u2019s been a lot of times where I\u2019ve wasted time writing out a script and had to throw it out because I thought of something better on page one or two and you got to go with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
\u00a9 Terry Moore<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> So doing that for 14 years and by my calculation 107 issues, do you have a favorite storyline or a single issue that\u2019s the one that you look back on and say this was the best?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry:<\/strong> I had a very romantic notion about Katchoo in the beginning. It was kind of based on when I was driving by a corner and it was really bad weather and it was drizzling out, and there was a girl standing there and she was really cute and it looked like she was waiting for somebody. My car went on and that was all I got. And I thought who would she stand out in the rain waiting for. Girls like that don\u2019t wait in the rain for people. And that was my whole premise for Katchoo, which is this girl should have the world on a plate but life is hard and when she finally gets somebody and she has to go after them and work for it, that was worth writing about. It\u2019s no fun writing about somebody if the world comes to them. But if somebody had to go for something and it\u2019s not necessarily what they\u2019re used to doing, I find that very romantic that she had to, she fought hard to try to win Francine\u2019s heart and it took a long time, and then she had to fight hard to get the most out of her relationship with David when she realized that may not be permanent. Those kind of struggles of the heart, that was easy to write about it. There was a lot to write about there. And I think everyone around the world can identify with stories about people who are struggling with heartfelt issues, a struggle with the heart. Everybody\u2019s been in love and had to work for it. So it\u2019s something that resonated with people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> When you live with these people for so long in your head and then you stop writing and drawing them how do you get them out of your head?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry:<\/strong> You don\u2019t. It was like breaking up The Beatles. I really was depressed after a while. At first I was relieved that I didn\u2019t have the deadline and then it was well, gosh Katchoo doesn\u2019t exist if I don\u2019t get up and draw her today. So I would spend days without Katchoo and Francine in my life. It was an adjustment, it really was. It was like a real-life separation. It\u2019s hard to understand that if you haven\u2019t spent 16 to 18 hours a day with them like that. It\u2019s like the Wilson thing. It\u2019s the Wilson Syndrome. Whoever you spend the most time with is who you\u2019re totally involved with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Oh you mean Wilson from the Tom Hanks movie, <\/em>Castaway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry:<\/strong> It was \u201cmy only companion\u201d situation. So you cut that off voluntarily and there\u2019s an adjustment that has to be made. After a while I settled down to okay, they\u2019re still with me and I was drawing enough sketches and everything to kind of keep it going. So now I have this fantasy in my head that I know where they are. They\u2019re in Santa Fe where I left them and I keep mental tabs on them to make sure things are going well for them. That\u2019s how I have to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Terry’s\u00a0SIP<\/em>\u00a020th Anniversary T-shirt design. \u00a9 Terry Moore<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> 2013 marks the 20th anniversary of <\/em>Strangers in Paradise. What are your plans for the return of Francine and Katchoo?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry:<\/strong> Well, the obvious things were a new image to celebrate the year. So we came out and drew a new image of Katchoo and how she looks today and we made a T-shirt out of it and a print that we\u2019ll have and they\u2019re really cool looking. The big news is that we\u2019re brining back the Strangers in Paradise<\/em> Omnibus.<\/em> In 2007 to mark the end of the series I came out with a very limited-edition hardcover box set of the entire Strangers in Paradise<\/em> series, but it was a limited print run and it sold out immediately. For years people have been asking for that to come back, and we have finally bitten the bullet and anted up and we\u2019re going to print up a bunch of box sets, but they\u2019ll all be in soft cover this time so the price point will be much lower and there\u2019ll be a lot more available. We\u2019re making a much bigger print run. So a soft cover Strangers in Paradise<\/em> Omnibus box set is what we\u2019re going to have out in July debuting at Comic-Con.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Wasn\u2019t there some talk about a novel?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry:<\/strong> I am working on a novel, but I\u2019m not meeting my deadline on it so I\u2019ve shelved it for right now to make sure that I get the Omnibus<\/em> out and the other SiP <\/em>big book I want to print this year, which will be at the end of the summer. That\u2019s the Strangers in Paradise Treasury,<\/em> which is a big, thick, full-color, coffeetable book of behind the scenes\u2014the making of Strangers in Paradise<\/em> and where they all come from. One of those wonderful compendiums that just collects all the factoids about the series. I actually made a Treasury that covered the first half of the series. It came out through HarperCollins. They printed the book but they never told anybody. So very few people have actually seen it. I thought I have the rights back to that, so I thought I\u2019m going to finish that book. [The new edition] covers the entire series and all of the one-shots and everything. We\u2019ll put it back out this year to celebrate the 20th anniversary, and we hope to have that out by September or October in time for the holiday season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Was there any other character from Strangers in Paradise that you ever considered spinning off into a series? I know that Tambi showed up in <\/em>Echo at one point.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry:<\/strong> Yeah, Tambi is the most logical choice because she has the Parker Girls. For a couple of years people were asking me to do a series on the Parker Girls, just them alone, and that would be a fun series to do. I\u2019m still thinking about that idea. At one point somebody approached me about a TV series on the Parker Girls which would be kind of sensationalism. But I think that would be a good series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Click here<\/a> to read part two of the Toucan Interview with Terry Moore!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n

Written by<\/p>\n\n\n

Comic-Con International<\/div>\n\n\n

Published<\/p>\n\n\n