ECCC 2018: Terry Moore On The Return Of Strangers In Paradise
by Hannah Means Shannon
Terry Moore took to the SyfyWire Live Stage at Emerald City Comic Con 2018 to talk about Strangers in Paradise.
Moore commented that ECCC has become famous for becoming a “great comic book show” focusing on comics as well as other things.
Moore explained that Strangers in Paradise ran for 13 years, with 19 trade paperbacks, at three companies, and ran to 2400 pages. It’s a story about “ordinary people doing extraordinary things”. Two women who couldn’t be “more different” go through their lives trying to find love.
There are “complications” and “mysteries” along the way. Asked why he decided to bring the comic series back, Moore replied that Katchoo is his “snoopy” that people always ask about.
In the anniversary year, he decided it would be right to bring it back, based on the one loose thread he’d left in the series previously. Katchoo has a terrible past, and worked through that in the main series, so the last thing she wants is for someone to bring that past up.
In one of the other books in the “terryverse”, Echo, that becomes intertwined with Strangers because a Parker Girl has survived and gone on the run, which is the equivalent of a 007 operative. The new series is about Katchoo trying to save her family by finding this rogue Parker Girl.
When he started Strangers, he didn’t necessarily expect the series to continue, but he was looking for work, and was asked to do two more issues after the first to make it a trilogy, Moore said.
Moore has always liked “world building” including music, sounds, and the tone of the characters’ voices, he said.
Asked about a rumor that the last issue of SIP changed after 9/11, Moore said that was true. Originally when he planned the series, he was going to have one of the couple die in a “tragedy love story”. After 9/11, which was traumatic to everyone, he decided that he had a responsibility to “enrich” peoples’ lives rather than upset them. He personally wanted “hope and happiness”, too, Moore said. 9/11 changed him, and thereby the comic.
SIP is on its way to being made into a movie, Moore said, and they’ve been talking to a director. He’s been a friend and fan of Angela Robinson for many years, who’s done movies and TV. In October/November 2017, she released The Wonder Women. She’s always wanted to direct Strangers in Paradise. They definitely “click” and he’s supposed to be “at home right now writing the script”, he said.
Asked about the casting of Kachew, Moore said that the talent pools he loves are the working actors in New York and Toronto.
