Over the past year I have talked to a number of different people in the field of entertainment.  I have talked to a Hollywood legend, a member of the KISS family, a legendary comic artist, a former teen idol, as well as a Brady, a Monkee and an Osmond; however, through all of these amazing encounters I have managed to keep my cool and my professionalism, and not allow the fan boy in me bubble to the surface.  But when it came to talking with Terry Moore, the man behind the independent comic book classic Strangers in Paradise, it was a whole different story.  It was nearly impossible.  For over a decade I have been following Terry's book.  His characters often feel more like friends than just characters on the page to me.  It's very fair to say that I have put a lot of emotional energy into Terry's work.  His book has made me laugh, cry and think, and to finally talk to the man who created it all was an exciting experience for me.

Thirteen years ago, Terry Moore started the epic story about two very different girls, Katchoo Choovanski and Francine Peters, and the colourful cast of characters that surrounded their lives, including the loyal and tormented David Quinn, pretty and perky Casey, seedy and arrogant Freddie Fumer and the evil Darcy Parker.  Adding in a perfect mixture of comedy, intrigue, danger, romance and heart-break, Strangers in Paradise has succeeded in gaining one of the largest fan bases for any current independently published comic, as well as a number of major awards and nominations.  Strangers in Paradise also has the unique distinction of being the comic book series that is often given to people who have never read comic books, thus introducing newbies to the wonderful medium of comics.  Terry Moore has managed to create a special book.

Earlier this year, Terry made an announcement that made huge ripples in the comic book world.  He announced that the final issue of Strangers in Paradise would hit the stands in early 2007.  He was retiring his masterpiece.  All good things must come to and end.  Thus, I knew that the time was right to contact Terry Moore for an overview of his time on Strangers in Paradise, and try to get a hint of things to come.

Although I've never met Terry, he and I are not strangers.  I have written Terry many times over the years, and have had my letters printed in a number of his books.  I also did a little bit of research work for Terry Moore in 2002, when he was preparing Birds of Prey for DC Comics, which ultimately had a very short run (my research surrounded the publication history of the Black Canary.)  This led to some personal correspondence, not to mention one of my prized possessions -- a one of a kind portrait of the Black Canary from the drawing board of Terry Moore himself (Terry's Birds of Prey was drawn by the immensely talented Amada Conner.)  However, despite years of encounters with each other, Terry and I had never spoken… until now.

There is one thing I must warn you about now: if you have never read Strangers in Paradise, and you're the type of individual who worries about spoilers, enter this at your own risk.  What is to follow is a conversation between a die-hard Strangers in Paradise fan with the man who created it all.  We talk about who lives, who dies, who loves and every different plot twist that has happened in the thirteen years of the series.  Also, if you're looking for hints on what will happen in the final issues of S.I.P., you won't find any.  Terry didn't offer any and I didn't ask.  What is to follow is an intense conversation about not only comics, but life itself.  Oh...and man.  Wait until you HEAR what he has to say about Batman!  Terry Moore has many interesting visions of the comic book industry, as well as the world.  As for the next project from Terry Moore?  Well, he may say a little bit about that....

So come with me, comic book fans, as we celebrate Strangers in Paradise and it's creator, Terry Moore, as:

CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE ADDICT PROUDLY PRESENTS

END OF PARADISE:

 A CONVERSATION WITH STRANGER IN PARADISE'S TERRY MOORE

I contacted Terry Moore in the fall of 2006, via his cell phone in Houston, Texas.

Terry Moore:  Hello?

Sam: Hello, I'm looking for Terry Moore.

Terry:  This is Terry.

Sam:  Oh, Terry!  Hi!  This is Sam Tweedle calling.

Terry:  Yeah!  Hi!  How ya' doing?

Sam:  Good!  Good!  How are you doing?

Terry:  Great! 

Sam:  Good!  Well look, we have an interview scheduled for today, and I was wondering if this is a good time?

Terry:  Yeah.

Sam:  I didn't get you in the middle of anything?

Terry:  No.  It's a good time.

Sam:  Okay, great.  Well, look sir, I really want to take the time to thank you for talking with me.  I mean, this is really exciting for me because I feel like I've been writing to you for years and I've never met you, but this is a real thrill for me!  I'm going to stop acting like a fan boy and get professional in a few minutes here, because I'm full of butterflies right now.

Terry:  I really appreciate that, and thank you very much.  I'm surprised that we haven't met over the years at a convention or something like that.  I guess circumstances just never worked out that way.

Sam:  I think it's more of a geography thing.  I pretty much just do the Toronto conventions, because I'm up here in Canada, and that's the closest venue to my home.  Have you ever done any of the Canadian conventions?

Terry:  Yes, I've been to Toronto once, a very long time ago, and we're talking again about going back to some other Toronto convention next year.

Sam:  Oh, fantastic!  Great!  Do you know which one?

Terry:  I don't yet.  I guess there's more then one up there, right?

Sam:  There's two in Toronto.

Terry:  Well, I'm looking forward to getting back up there at some point.

Sam:  Anyways, over the last couple of days I've reread the Strangers in Paradise Treasury and your last years' worth of books, and I was kind of thinking, "Oh my god!  I'm interviewing Terry Moore?  What should I ask?"  But when I sat down today, everything came really quickly and easily for me.  I've put so much emotional energy into your books over the years, so I've got a bunch of questions here.  I don't know how many of them are that original, you've probably heard everything by now.

Terry:  Well, the one I hear the most is where did you get the idea?

Sam:  Well, that's not one of my questions.

Terry:  Yay for you!

Sam:  Well, you mentioned that in the introduction to the Treasury, so I was thinking you're probably sick of that one.

Terry:  Well, that's the most common question, so I wrote a whole book to answer it, really.  The Treasury.

Sam:  So for the sake of our readers then, where did you get the idea?

Terry: (Laughs) I just pulled it out of my ass.  What can I tell ya'?

Sam:  I've lost track of time.  How long has Strangers in Paradise been going now?

Terry:  I started in 1993.

Sam:  Wow.  I was at university at the time and working at a comic shop, and my boss actually turned me on to your book.

Terry:  Oh good.

Sam:  That's how I found out about your book.  I'm one of your old school fans.  I think the first issue I read was the one where Emma died.

Terry:  Oh yeah.  That's when I started getting serious about making something with my name on it that I could be proud of.

Sam:  So, when I was reading the Treasury, in your introduction it sounded to me that it was like you sort of stumbled into this comic thing because -- well, were you an old school comic reader?  Was it something you grew up with?  What's your personal history with the comic medium?

Terry:  I had about as much experience with comics as you would expect from the average American guy who leaves it behind and never looks back.  I mean, I read Batman, Spiderman and Dennis the Menace.  Well, starting with Dennis the Menace as a little boy, and then found superheroes when I got older, and I read just a scattering of mainstream titles until they killed Gwen Stacy.  That's when I stopped reading mainstream titles.

Sam:  Why was that?  Did that story turn you off?

Terry:  I was so pissed off by that story development.  I despised the writer.  I thought, this sucks!  They're just reaching for shock value and are going to kill off everything that makes this cool.  Y'know, if Peter Parker is one of those characters that can never solve his problems, then I don't care about him.  It's too much dead weight and to this day I still hold a grudge.  I was telling Alex Ross this one night, that I'm still upset about it.  Still pissed off about it.  He was appalled that I'd still be mad at John Romita.  That's sacrilege.

Sam:  Well, you're not the first person who has told me this!  Now for me, I'm a big Spidey fan and that story is probably my favourite Marvel story of all time.

Terry:  Well, for me I thought that moving on to the red head girl….

Sam:  Mary Jane.

Terry:  Mary Jane.  I just thought that's not the way she was supposed to be in the beginning.  Mary Jane was never supposed to be "plan B."  Mary Jane was kind of the Katchoo of the series in the beginning, and Gwen was the Francine.  So they killed off Francine and I got mad basically, I guess when I look at it that way.  But anyways, that's what I thought was mainstream and I moved on to music and all that.  And when I was into rock 'n' roll and going into all kinds of stores, I discovered underground comics and I switched over to all the underground people.  And that was what I was into all through high school and college age and all that, so that's my background.

Sam:  So if you sort of left comic books behind, then how did you end up becoming an award winning comic book writer and artist?

Terry:  Well, so I had what you'd call a wilderness period.  I was nowhere to be found for a number of years, and I came back to it because I had a little boy who was about five years old and he was having trouble getting interested in reading.  I remembered that I got into reading because of comics, so I took him to a comic store expecting to find the same old stuff I'd left behind ten years ago.  I was surprised at the new variety and all the great stuff that was on the shelves, and totally blown away by these new independent comics and the self-publishing movement.  I had no idea, so I walked in and I saw the Rocketeer, The Tick and Cerebus, and just all this stuff and I thought, "Hey, this is really close to the goofy stuff I was doing in high school for my own enjoyment!"  And like I said in the Treasury, that this happened at a time in my life when I was trying to get into comic strips and getting nowhere, and then I saw these comic books and I thought I'd do better with long format stories.  I could self publish, and I saw Cerebus who took twenty four pages to light a cigarette so I thought, "Okay, I found my speed."  So that's when it occurred to me, through these independent guys.

Sam:  So you tried for years to get into the syndicated comic business.  Why was it so hard, or why didn't take off?  Or what's the true horror story behind that industry?

Terry:  I figured it out finally.  I didn't put myself into the work.  Comic strips look very deceiving.  It looks like you're just telling a joke where you've got six inches on a piece of paper to go badda-bing, badda-boom.  So that's what I tried to do.  I learned all the craftsmanship.  I could copy anybody.  I wrote all this badda-bing, badda-boom stuff, and it was just awful.  All of it was just dreadful and it wasn't until I was doing Strangers in Paradise for a long time that I finally figured out that the reason Strangers in Paradise worked was because I tapped a vein, and you have to do the same with comic strips.  Although it looks like a piece of fluff, it's not good unless you tap a vein, and you can't put on a happy mask and fool anybody.  It's got to come from the heart and if it doesn't then it's just a piece of shit.  That's the difference between Nancy and Calvin and Hobbes.  Wary Worth and Peanuts.  Now that I know that, I'm tempted to try again. 

Sam:  Oh really?  Do you have something planned or in the works?

Terry:  I think about it all the time but nothing I can tell you about.

Sam:  No problem.  Actually, I should have promised you this in the beginning: at Confessions of a Pop Culture Addict we don't look for spoilers, and I'm definitely not going to ask you how Strangers in Paradise is going to end.  I'm not going to touch it.  I'm not going to go there.  I don't even want any clues.  You wouldn't tell me anyways.

Terry:  I'd just have to lie.

Sam:  So you're ending Strangers in Paradise.  Why have you decided to end the series?

Terry:  For it's own good.  I want it to have a life.  I want it to be a book that you can buy and that would have a story to it.  A beginning, a long middle and an end.  If I don't stop, it will just meander along and turn into Blondie.  That's my nightmare, because I've spent thirteen years on this so far and I want it to have a life of its own when I stop it, and can be a book I can publish for the rest of my life.  The only way to do that is to make it a good story with an ending.  You have to end it while everybody is still true to their character and you still have original ideas.  After awhile you just begin to parody yourself and it just falls apart.  I've run the gamut of all my original ideas and now I need to take them to the logical conclusion that I've always envisioned.  If I don't, I'm going to have to start writing plan B stuff and what if stuff, and I don't think anybody wants to see that from this particular series.

Sam:  I think when you first announced that you were ending the series, I wrote to you almost immediately and told you that I understood why and that I thought it was a good idea, too.

Terry:  Yeah.

Sam:  Because I don't want it to be like the final season of the X-Files.

Terry:  Well, I'm at a point where the ending I'm writing, everything I'm writing now, is a complete anti- type book end to the mini-series and to the beginning of the series.  I'm still able to connect all the dots, and that's when I know that I'm picking the right time.  Everything in the middle is the set up to explain why the ending can happen.  You had to know all the history between all these characters to understand why we're going to have a lot of the same situations crop up that we started with, but everyone reacts differently and now we know exactly why.  That's been a real joy to me as a writer, to be able to propose a thesis with my mini-series and go on to this long explanation of the laws of physics in the middle, and now at the end I can connect all the dots.  It's like a really cool thesis for me.

Sam:  Let's talk about that first mini-series just for a moment.  I always thought it was interesting in the first mini-series that it was sort of a modern break-up story, and it's completely misleading to the first regular series where you get the Darcy Parker story and all the crime and the intrigue, and its a much heavier read.  Did you always have that story in your head when you started the first mini-series, or did that sort of evolve?

Terry:  No, honestly I started the mini-series just off the top of my head, even though I had the foundations of what the characters were like in my head from having messed with the characters.  But when I started the mini-series story, I wrote it as I went and I discovered those characters the same way you did, by hitting that page and going, "Oh, this happened!"  And when I say that, I mean I started a page with an idea and then new ideas would just happen as I spent six hours or eight hours working on that page, and I would incorporate the ideas I came up with into my work as I went.  For instance, the first time I drew Katchoo, the first page Katchoo appears on I didn't know she had been arrested for a felony until I wrote that page in issue two.  But as I was working on Katchoo and Francine and Freddie, I was thinking about the background and this is what kind of person they are, and basically I was profiling them like when you see someone at a coffee shop and you let your imagination run away.  I was doing that, and so that's how I came up with the characters during the mini-series, and their backgrounds, and I alluded to all this kinky and dangerous stuff but I didn't show it because I was focused on writing just a Neil Simon sex comedy play kind of thing.  Then when I had a chance to do the regular series I thought, "Okay, now I need to call my bluff and show all this stuff, flesh all this stuff out and make a full range of story types here."  That's when I got more serious about my characters and took my job more seriously, about trying to write something that was worth reading.

Sam:  Now, when a lot of your characters first appear -- I think the obvious example of this is Casey, who was kind of a one page joke.  They all seem to be rather one-dimensional, but over time they become these very multi-layered characters with a hundred different sides to them.  Which of the characters' development surprised you the most?

Terry:  Casey.

Sam:  Yeah.

Terry:  Definitely Casey.  Katchoo and Francine have developed along the lines that I always envisioned, and so has Freddie even really, but Casey's the one who surprised me.  I did think she was just a rebound girlfriend, but I realized that she brought in a -- I always talk about the triangulation.  A good character triangulation between Katchoo, Francine and David, but I needed one for the girls too, for when it was girls' night out and Casey really provided that.  Casey offered something that neither of the other girls offered to the story, and the more she was around the more they liked her and let her into the circle.  She fought to get in there.  It's pretty interesting, I thought.  I was pretty interested in her and how she developed.

Sam:  I'm just surprised how endearing she's become.  Like I love her, but she didn't start that way.  She was such an obnoxious character.  Now there were all these hints that Casey had a back-story, and you kind of got into it a bit a few months ago with the eating disorder story, but who is Casey?  Is there some back-story you haven't told us?

Terry:  Yeah there is.  I have back-stories on them all.  I guess there is a story about why Casey has scars on her hands and her arms, but I just haven't had time to do it all.  I don't know if I'll write those back stories later in novels or something.  I don't know.  A lot of people have requested Strangers in Paradise novels where I can get more into background material and all that.  And a lot of stories have not been included in the Strangers in Paradise graphic novels because it's too laborious to draw it all.  It's a lot easier to write than it is to draw.

Sam:  I see, and I think when you go into the prose it's absolutely beautiful.  I'd love to see novels.

Terry:  Thank you, and the thing about the prose is, I can cover so much more story.  I can tell you more story in one page than I can in ten pages of pictures sometimes.  That's the reason I started bringing it in, because I only had two or three pages to do an entire scene that would take me fifteen pages to draw, and I really needed that scene in there because you really needed to know what's going on with Detective Walsh, or what people are thinking, and I don't like doing thought balloons. 

Sam:  And it seems to work wonderfully.

Terry:  Good.  I hope so.  I want them to be able to weave in and out, kind of like blending colours.  That's all.  It's just another way of writing and blending it all together in one tapestry.

Sam:  Is this why you haven't done any stories featuring Katchoo and Emma?  Because Emma seems to be an odd enigma in this series.  We really don't know her at all, yet she's been part of the mythos for thirteen years. 

Terry:  Yeah, she's kind of the Stu Sutcliffe of the group.  You know, the first bass player for the Beatles?

Sam:  Yeah, he died of a tumor.

Terry:  Yeah.  We kind of get the feeling that Stu was the coolest one of all, but we never got a chance to see what he would have done through all those evolutions.   So, it's kind of like that with Emma.  Emma was really cool, and unfortunately you and me, and everyone else who is reading, show up after the Emma era.  It's like somebody telling you that he had a big brother, but he had died ten years ago and you never met him and will never know him.  In all fact, I didn't flesh out those Hollywood years too much because I knew that once it got started I wouldn't know where to end.  I mean, there's just so much story there.  That's a whole other series actually. 

Sam:  Now, when you're talking about other stories that you've never told, were there any plot developments that….  Well you often talk about how the stories sort of write themselves.  I think it's funny when you would write a blurb in Diamond Distribution's Previews Catalogue, and you'd say that the story is going in a certain direction but there's nothing to do with that blurb once the book arrives.  I remember once about a romance between Francine and Detective Walsh that never happened, or the proposed Casey story that we never saw, or even the one time when David had a new girlfriend that even made the cover of the book although she never showed up in the book.  Are there any lost stories, lost plots or alternative storylines that you were planning that never happened that you can tell us about?

Terry:  Yes, there are tons of them.  Can I tell you about them?  Some of them I even draw pages for and stop and go, "Whoa, I don't want to go in that direction."  There was, yeah.  Well there was one after the plane crash.  The next issue opened up with Veronica in a massage room surrounded by her lieutenants, one of who looked like Sebastian Cabot and some New York business looking woman.  They had note pads and all that, and they were trying to explain to her that everything had been screwed up.  She throws a fit in this steam room and calls them incompetent, and it's all done in a comedy kind of way.  The other reason it was a cool looking scene was because Veronica looked cool with her hair loose on the massage table.  I drew two pages of that and then I realized that I didn't want to handle it that way and stopped, and ended up handling it a different way where it was a lot more serious, where she goes to a warehouse where the guys are being held that screwed the job up, and she executes them.  I decided to go that darker, more Robert de Nero, route than the TV sitcom drama route.  That's one event that comes to mind because I still have those two penciled pages in my studio and I see them from time to time, although there is nothing I can do with them now, but I have a ton of stuff like that.  I have a ton of scenes and scripts that I wrote, and once I started writing the story I totally changed it.    

Sam:  When looking through your early strips, they are full of these archetypical Katchoos and Francines in various guises and forms.  It's almost as if you were developing those characters for a number of different strips over a number of different years.  Where did those two girls come from?

Terry:  The easiest way to explain it is that they came from my idea of two totally different types of women.  If I had to give you something out of my head, two women characters that were not alike.  Those were the first two women characters that came to mind.  The most obvious.  These are two girls who would not normally befriend each other, and my challenge as a writer was to explain why two girls like this would bond together.  That was my writing challenge, because even though they were totally different and had different lifestyles, they had found something that could bond them together.  If I served you two goth people and told you to write a story about why these two became friends, well, it already sounds boring because they already have a lot in common.  But if I say, write a story about a goth girl and a Wall Street investor, it's a lot more interesting and now you're interested in how the hell you're going to do that!?  See?  The interesting stories have friction in them.  There has to be friction, or some sort of aggravator, or some sort of rock in the oyster and that's how you end up with something of value. 

Sam:  What about the name Katchoo?  It's not a common name.  I sounds more like a sneeze, and it's not the first time you used the name in a strip.  Where did you come up with her name?

Terry:  My notebooks are just totally full of names and stuff like that.  Plays on words.  That just pours out of my head like snot.  Its something I do very, very easily.  What do you call it?  Stream of consciousness?  That's just something I do easily.  And then I came up with an explanation for it later.  First I get the words and then I explain it, or justify it, later. 

Sam:  And refresh our memories?  What's the explanation for Katchoo's name?

Terry:  The explanation is that her name is Katina Choovanski from Poland, and that Katchoo is a contraction for Katina Choovanski.  Her dad said that she was so little when she was born, I guess she was under seven pounds or something like that, so he said she was no bigger then a sneeze.  A little katchoo.

Sam:  One thing I always find really interesting, when I think of your series, is that you have been able to take really modern, controversial issues - such as religion, AIDS, modern sexuality, eating disorders and anorexia, stalking, miscarriage  - and put them into a medium where most of the time these topics would come off as being really preachy or really cheesy, yet you do it with a certain amount of dignity and flair.  It becomes a powerful and hard hitting reality.  How are you able to take some of those topics and make them real, and not into some of those "Spiderman Just Says No" types of books?

Terry:  I don't know how to tell somebody how to do it.  All I can describe is what's going on in my mind when I'm doing it.  You can talk about a controversial subject and how it comes out of your mouth just depends on the person, whether it's divisive or informative or whatever.  When I approach those subjects, I really feel that I'm standing in the middle of any debates or any divisions, and I am talking to both sides at once.  I'm not standing on one side of anything and talking to the other side.  I think that makes a big difference.  I also, on the one hand, treat people and their issues with love and respect.  My point of view of the world is that every person is irreplaceable and a miracle, and everybody needs to be treated that way.  But, on the other hand, if someone has something we can talk about and laugh about and rib about and not take it seriously, then I do that. 

Y'know, it's kind of like if you're at the family Thanksgiving and everybody is ribbing Uncle Maury about his toupee.  That's how I feel.  I mean, I love Uncle Maury, I'll hug ya', but I'm going to make a joke about your toupee.  So that's how I am, and I just have way too many friends on both sides of every issue; I just can't stand in the corner with my hands in my pockets.  I'll just go and talk to them, y'know, everybody on both sides, and that's how I do it.  I have a good friend who's a retired Enron executive, and I have another good friend who really thinks we need to take up arms and overthrow the government right now.  I've been to dinner with friends that are conservative preachers, and then I have more gay friends than a straight guy should have.  So I just really believe in the value of looking at everything in the world, and just don't hang out with people like yourself and put on blinders and try to ignore the stuff you don't like or don't agree with.  You know, I'm trying to experience and understand every aspect of people that I can.  That's kind of what I write about.  Sometimes when I'm writing I'm not really giving out dissertations, I'm just really exploring issues.  Saying, this is what the pro-life are people are saying and this is what the pro-choice people are saying.  I'm just trying to reflect or satirize them equally and then let the reader see either some truth in there, or a lesson, or both, or whatever.  I really feel that if you take any of us too seriously…. 

Like there was a period where people took Abbie Hoffman really seriously and then twenty years later the guy commits suicide, which to me invalidates everything he stood for.  I just think that it may seem really serious today, but if we are all thinking that the most important thing in the world is worth killing a lot of people over, then we really got to stand back and take another look at it.  That's kind of my job as an American satirist, to say "Whoa whoa whoa!  Let me give you my take on President Bush, or let me give you my take on Gloria Steinman or whoever."  I think it's all fodder for an American satirist, but it all needs to be treated with love and respect and caring, and understand that these words do have emotional pop-ups that can influence people for better or for worse.  I hope that, when someone finishes reading my issues or my theories, that I have not pissed off or alienated people with feelings of no hope or disrespect.  I hope that either I make them think about what they don't agree with, or even prod them to rethink their own issues.  Mostly among the lines of, let's kind of all stand closer together here and stop being so divisive.  That's my bottom line.

Sam:  Strangers in Paradise has one of the strongest fan bases in comics today.  Was there ever a plot twist, a plot device,  a cliffhanger or an issue you tackled that became a real hotbed of controversy amongst the fans? 

Terry:  Yeah.  Issue 43.  The one where Francine is throwing up in the toilet and envisioning her possible futures.  Issue 43 ends at the end of option one of her future's imagination, and it looks like it's the end of the series, that we're going to reboot the series and that it's all been a dream. 

Sam:  I remember that!

Terry:  Yeah, I got a few letters of support, but I got an awful lot of letters saying, "You son of a bitch!  If you gave me ten years of material just to say that it was all a Dallas dream in the shower then I'm gonna kill ya."  I thought that I ended that issue in the wrong place, because if you turned the next page she's back at the toilet and she's thinking all that.  I thought it would be a cool cliffhanger and you'd have to wait until the next issue to see the context, but it kind of backfired on me.  It fired everybody's buttons the wrong way and I was amazed at the volatile responses.  I even had retailers throw the book down and say, "I'm not carrying this series anymore."  I mean I lost accounts over it,  and I thought, "Holy crap."  Unfortunately, this was also right around 9/11 and everyone's nerves were just shot, I guess.  I guess it was just bad timing all the way around.  I remember thinking that I had to go to a convention in New York a month later, in November, and we were all wondering what that was going to be like.  Issue 44 hadn't come out yet to help save my butt, and I was wondering what it was going to be like meeting fans, and people standing in line saying, "Boy, you blew it!"  And me having to explain, "Wait until next issue!  Wait until next issue!"

Sam:  So what was that con like?

Terry:  The con went fine.  People are a lot more vicious in letters than in person, and once issue 44 came out it kind of killed the controversy.  Now it's not a controversy at all because now you can only find it in the trades; you just turn the page and you don't have to wait six weeks for the answer.

Sam:  Again with the fans.  The letters that you print in the letter pages - and thank god you have letter pages because I am a big fan of them.  I used to be quite the letter hack and you've actually printed five of my letters in Strangers in Paradise so far.  Anyhow, the letters you get seem to be very personal, and it's almost like people really see you as a friend and tell you very personal things.  I was really amused once when someone actually proposed to his fiancée through your letter page!  Do you have any stories about your fans?  Any memorable letters or moments or stuff people shared with you that you can talk about, or anything that touched you personally that anyone had written to you?

Terry:  Well the letters that really touch me - and I get them frequently, which is kind of disturbing, actually - the letters that really get to me are the letters that say, I was at a low point in my life and I read your series, and just looking at the series as a discussion of the human situation, what life is like today and how to get in through it, and your writing has really helped me out a lot.  There have been some letters saying you saved my life!  They'll say my wife left me, I lost my job, I had nothing and I started reading your series, and it just kind of helped me get my life back together.  I don't really print those because that's so dearly personal.  And I get other letters that I don't print where they say I'm miserable, I'm in the closet and I want to come out and you've given me the courage.  Or, I love somebody so much but they're in another relationship and I thought I was going to die, and then I read your series and saw that there is life after the big love gone by.  So those kinds of letters, I really am glad that my stories have that effect, instead of teaching people how to lash out or make bombs or how to commit the perfect murder in my story.  I think writers really do have a responsibility to set the emotional tone of the country, because the average American is just getting battered by the news and the business world, and are just not making ends meet.  They look to their entertainment for a laugh, or a little balance in their lives, or a little giggle, or a little explanation once in a while, and writers really have the ability to have a good affect or a bad affect on people.  I think if you're batting average is in the positive column, then you're doing a good job.  Y'know, a lot of writers just want to explore the dark side because it sells, and okay, so you've made money, but you've made people miserable by doing that.  Or you've helped them dig a hole, or you've helped them learn how to slit their wrists properly, or how to be a serial killer, or how to use a knife, or things like that.  It's kind of like being a writer that is read by a group of people, it's kind of like having a superpower and it's up to the writer to decide if he's going to use that for good or evil. 

Sam:  It comes down to, "With great power comes great responsibility."

Terry:  It really does.  Are you going to use your powers to help people, or screw them up?

Sam:  Well, if I can give you a testament of how your book spoke to me, I remember being at a low point in my life and I had a lot of things that were upsetting me.  You wrote that issue that spotlighted Freddie, which to this day probably is one of my very favourite issues, and I identified with Freddie so much in that issue.  That scared the hell out of my at first.  But it really put me on the track to pick myself up and become a better person, and to become a better man.

Terry:  I think the reason why Freddie's story resonates with you, and with me, is because so many guys can relate to that and it strikes a chord into all of us.  That's the whole point of it, because you're not alone man and you are what you want to be.

Sam:  Well that series had such an impact, and not only was it really funny but it was the fact that you gave the biggest cad in the series a heart and a soul, and you made me go, "Wow, he's not a complete bastard."

Terry:  Okay, now that's me trying to illustrate my point that I was making earlier: that we need to realize that everybody needs love and respect, and that everybody's irreplaceable.  'Cause even when it's easy to categorize some guy briefly in the office as a jerk, there's a story there man.  He wasn't born a jerk and he might not die a jerk.  That's the whole point of the Razor's Edge.  That was the whole point of that story and Oprah says it.   Just because you were born one way doesn't mean you have to be that way and die that way.

Sam:  Well the way you're talking right now, it sounds like the overall message of the entire Strangers in Paradise series is about love and understanding.

Terry:  Oh yeah.  Absolutely.  That's my whole point.  People, especially your friends and your loved ones, they're the most precious things in your life, and the exploration of how we screw each other up in the name of love.  We don't only screw up our enemies.  We screw up our loved ones too, and here's how we do it.  Here's some good responses and here are some bad ones.

Sam:  So, I wanted to do a little thing here.  I was wondering if I could go through the list of Strangers in Paradise characters and if you could tell us, in fifteen words or less, or more if you want, tell us something about each character.  Some background stuff we may not have known, or some reflections or thoughts or description or any thoughts that come to your head quickly about the characters.  Would you be willing to do that?

Terry:  Sure.  I'll try.

Sam:  You kind of know what I'm talking about?

Terry:  Yeah, I think so.

Sam:  Okay.  Cool.  All right, let's start with Tambi.

Terry:  Bad girl on good behaviour.

Sam:  One thing that I found interesting when I was rereading your last year's worth of issues is when Tambi came back; you drew this one panel of Katchoo turning around to see her and she was smiling.  It was just such a change between them, and how her reaction to Tambi has changed since her first appearances in the series.  Okay.  How about Freddie?

Terry:  A good candidate for rehab.

Sam:  Okay.  Chuck.

Terry:  Oh.  That infuriating acquaintance that seems to have it all together.

Sam:  Chuck has it all together?

Terry:  Well compared to Freddie.

Sam:  Oh, okay.  How about Francine's mother?

Terry:  Oh.  Oh.  Iceberg.  Because there is a lot more to her beneath the surface then she lets her daughter see.

Sam:  There's another character you developed well.  Kind of a Casey-esque character, that was a one issue joke, who has turned into such a three dimensional and multi-layered character.  I think it's amazing how much she's developed and now you have the whole Molly Midnight thing.  Okay, how about Detective Walsh?

Terry:  Oh, pick-up truck Texan with a badge.

Sam:  I like him.

Terry:  A lot of people do.

Sam:  Will we see him again?

Terry:  Yeah.  We're supposed to.  We're supposed to see everybody again before the end of the series. 

Sam:  Ah, that's great.  It'll be like...uh, what do you call it…?

Terry:  Curtain call.

Sam:     I like him, and I had an old girlfriend who used to say, "Just because you can grow a mustache doesn't mean that you should."  For some reason his moustache is his symbol.  It's his S symbol on his chest.

Terry:  Some people can do that, and some people can't.

Sam:  How about Veronica?

Terry:  Ohhhhh.  Ohhhhhh.  Veronica is a slide made out of razor blades.

Sam:  She was my favourite Parker Girl and I was so sad to see her go.  Kind of like when Chester Gould killed off Flat Top.

Terry:  She's the one who's most messed up in her head.  She's the one you would never be able to fix.  She really is.  She's like a rabid animal deep inside.  The more you picked off the layers of control and civilization and all of that, the more you would find a rabid animal.

Sam:  Did you have that story written for her when she first flashed Freddie?  Or was it just something that came later?

Terry:  I didn't think it through, but when I was working on her I knew she was a time bomb character.  It's the quiet ones that can end up slitting your throat, and so she became that character.

Sam:  How about Brad?

Terry:  Brad's one of those guys that would say, "Man, meet me at the park at four and play basketball."  Just the average guy, good achiever.

Sam:  I think one of the clever things you've done is to make Brad kind of dull, because he never outshines any of the main characters. 

Terry:  He's Mr. Dependable and some women really meet that guy in their lives, and they don't need any kind of drama.  He's perfect for that kind of woman and, unfortunately, Francine wasn't the right one. 

Sam:  How about Darcy Parker?

Terry:  One of my favourite characters.  Darcy was the woman I could never meet in real life but would always want to.  When I originally made her, I described her as a type of extra rich person who was not interested in anybody else that wasn't more powerful then them.  You could never say anything of interest to her, or do anything to keep her interested.  You would be invisible to her. 

Sam:  And why is she your favourite character?

Terry:  Because of when you get her in her house with her shields down, my goodness, what a tapestry of psychology to work with there.  So as a writer she's interesting to deal with.

Sam:  I think that it's interesting that, although you killed her off very early in the series, her phantom seems to hover over the series continuously.

Terry:  She's one of those people that made big waves and affected peoples' lives.  But it's part of the effect to show that, because if you got hit with a baseball bat when you were fifteen it'd still be a problem in your life.  You don't get away with it.  Only in fiction can you get away with it, but in real life if you met someone like Darcy and you had to work for her for a year and a half, it would still affect your life ten years later.  It's just that kind of thing.

Sam:  I think it's just beautiful how she's never gone away.  I mean, you can kill her but she just won't go away completely.

Terry:  Yeah, and she died so rapidly because, again, you don't get to choose your death.  You don't get to prepare for it, and very rarely do people do that.  They can make the hugest plans in the world and then, whoops, they're gone.  It's just amazing how people can think they have tomorrow and they plan on it, they depend on it, they bank on it, and they deprive themselves a day for it, and this afternoon at four-thirty they're dead and it was all for not.  That was kind of the point for Darcy.

Sam:  I also think it was brave to kill her early on.  Were you anxious about that, because it just kind of didn't seem right?

Terry:  You know, it was one of those things where I knew I had a great character, and I had a lot of fun with her for years -- and the same for Veronica as well, really -- but I'd rather be more realistic about what really happens to people like that than to come up with another Batman/Joker where Katchoo has this big nemesis that keeps going to jail, keeps getting out, go to jail, get out, go to jail, get out.  I think the Batman/Joker thing is a farce!  I think it's absolutely ridiculous and the fact that Batman has not put a .38 to Joker's head and just blown his brains out, because the guy has done every crime imaginable and…. I think he even blew up an atom bomb one time.  I mean, if that guy's on the street and Batman just beats him up with his fists like a third grader and then brings him back to the police, then that's an injustice to America!  Batman's more evil than the Joker! 

Sam:  Or how about the fact that the Joker killed Batman's kid?  His ward!

Terry:  It's just ridiculous!  And I told the DC people that I despise Batman, and I speak for a legion of people out there.  I despise him!  He's not a hero!  He's not even an anti-hero!  He's the worst villain in all of his books!  I mean, this guy has become an abomination to life in America and that's why you should let me write him!  That way I can fix him!  Have you ever had a writer who despises your character?  Well, that's what you need now because you got people who worship the ground he walks on, who know all his history and are just regurgitating the same shit over and over, and if I see one more story about his fucking parents and all that.  I mean the guy is psychotic!  He really needs to be locked up! 

Sam:  What would you have done with Batman?

Terry:  When I was on Birds of Prey I decided that one of the reasons I was interested in Birds of Prey was because Barbara Gordon, Oracle, was one of the ones talking to Batman.  Batman only had four or five people who he would let talk to him and Barbara Gordon was one of them.  I decided that the problem with Batman was that he didn't have a woman in his life.  It's like those guys who you can tell don't have a woman in their life because of they way they dress?  Well, he's like that, and he has no counterbalance.  A man without a woman is not a good thing… or a partner, I should say.  If he wants to be gay that's fine too.  Just pick someone with style and humanity that can balance him out, y'know?  Well Batman didn't have that, and he needed someone in his life to tell him off like the frikkin' prick he is, and that's what Barbara Gordon was going to do.  She was going to call him on it and point it out and say, "Look man, you're worse than anything you go after.  I'm not kidding!  It's not just words!  You know, you need to turn yourself into rehab or get help."  So anyways… I have a thirty minute rant about Batman and that's just the first five minutes of it.

Sam:  But the DC people didn't like your vision?

Terry:  I think they were startled by it.  They didn't know what to do with it, but they were probably thinking, "Man, I wouldn't let you near that character with a ten foot pole!"

Sam:  I've never thought of Batman in the way you've just put it, but you do make a lot of sense.  You really do.

Terry:  Well, it's like after Phoenix killed all those people; it's not like you can say, "Oh, she'll go to rehab, be a good person again and be back on the streets."  No.  I don't think so.  At some point you've got to eliminate that character because you can't justify them being lose on the face of this planet.  You're really walking the line there man.

Sam:  So back to the list of characters… well, your characters….

Terry:  Ah!  Strangers in Paradise! 

Sam:  Okay, we'll go to the final four.  We already talked about her, but tell me something about Casey.

Terry:  Coping with more then we can imagine. 

Sam:  Are we going to see what she's coping with in the next couple of issues?

Terry:  Not in great detail, but we've implied it.  Ugly duckling school years, dyslexia, and we just recently discovered that she has to take supplements and medicines for the rest of her life. Stuff like that.  It's like when you meet somebody and they never mention it and then as you get closer as friends you discover this stuff a bit at a time.

Sam:  Now how about David?

Terry:  David is the Switzerland of the characters.  He's kind of the UN.  He can walk into every camp.  Kind of allows us to see everybody through his eyes. 

Sam:  Now I'm a big David fan.  Out of the trinity of the characters in your book, I like him best.  I don't know if it's because I relate to him because he's male or what it is, but he's always been the touchstone for me.

Terry:  I think a lot of people feel like David inside, but find themselves acting like Freddie and they don't know why.

Sam:  Well I can relate to that.

Terry:  Well that's what I seem to do.

Sam:  Now Francine.

Terry:  Francine.  Just a very beautiful soul.

Sam:  And finally, your most famous character, Katchoo.

Terry:  Katchoo is James Dean's sister.

Sam:  Cool.  That's a cool way of putting it.  Now you have the Katchoo statue coming out in a couple of months, which I think is just beautiful, and you've done busts and t-shirts and fridge magnates and pins.  Why haven't we seen any Strangers in Paradise action figures?  Will we ever see any action figures?

Terry:  I think Robyn -- who is the one who arranges all this business stuff -- I think she's talking to Shocker Toys about action figures.  So you might want to keep an eye on them.

Sam:  Very cool!  Very cool!  I would love to see that.  Now, I don't have anymore Strangers in Paradise questions, but I was wondering if we could talk about some of the other projects that you've worked on over the years.  You did the Tara and Willow book for Dark horse Comics with Amber Benson.

Terry::  Yeah.

Sam:  I'm a huge Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan.  What was working with Amber Benson like?

Terry:  She was a sweetheart!  I think she's prettier in person than she is on the screen!  She's very imaginative and a good writer, very enthusiastic and very sweet.  Just a very cool person.  I found her enthusiasm to be contagious for her work and all that, and the reason why I took the story was because parts the script that I had never seen anywhere before, and I thought, "That's so cool!  I really want to draw that!"  And that's why I took the whole story.  Just because of her imagination, and she came up with some big stuff.

Sam:  So I have one last question for you, Terry.  After Strangers in Paradise is done -- and right now I feel like the anticipation is like the ending of your favourite TV series.  I haven't felt this way since the final weeks of Buffy.  Now I know you can't tell us much, and I know you wouldn't even if you could, but is this the last we are going to see of Terry Moore in the comic industry?

Terry:  No.  Not at all.  I like the comic medium and I love drawing comics.  I really do.  I'm happiest when I'm at the drawing board.  So I definitely will be doing a lot more work, and I hope people will keep following my work and we'll see what else happens.

Sam:  Do you have another world starting to be created in your head?

Terry:  Yes.  Yes I do.

Sam:  Any idea of when we might see that?

Terry:  Probably shortly after Strangers in Paradise finishes.  That's the plan.  I'm not going to take any time off.  I'm not going to just pat myself on the back or anything.  I think of myself as a working cartoonist and retirement is not in my vocabulary.

Sam:  That's great because I don't want to see you disappear.  I mean, I'm sure that a lot of your fans are pretty upset that Strangers in Paradise is coming to an end, but I'm hoping that the next book you do will fill in the gap that is left in us when Strangers in Paradise ends. 

Terry:  Well, I'm still very, very motivated.  I have a lot of stories I want to tell.

Sam:  Well Terry, I want to thank you, not for just talking to us but personally for the books you write, the world you've created and the characters you've brought into all of our lives, because they really have affected us and they really do mean so much to us.  I just hope you know how special and beautiful Strangers in Paradise is to so many people. 

Terry:  Thank you, Sam.  I really appreciate that.  I really do.  I'm glad you've been reading.  It's been a pleasure to talk to you finally and thanks for being there.

Sam:  Well thank you, Terry.  You take care.

Terry:   Bye.

Thus ended my first personal encounter with one of my idols in the comic book industry.  2007 is going to prove to be an exciting year.  Not only will Strangers in Paradise finally come to it's end, and not only will Terry's next project probably be starting up, but Terry is scheduled to be at the Toronto Comic Convention in June, where I will finally be able to meet Terry face to face.  Despite what this year brings though, Confessions of a Pop Culture Addict will be committed to supporting Terry and all his projects.  Also, if you haven't read the masterpiece that is Strangers in Paradise, there is no better time to do so than now.  The book is available in trade paperback from pretty much any better comic shop or book store.  Check it out for one of the most beautiful, and addictive, series ever.

All content copyright Sam Tweedle 2006.